Omnia History

Reflections on #NCPH2019

Wow, what a conference. I met and reconnected with so many public historians doing fantastic work and had many opportunities to reflect and work on my own complicity in oppressive structures that shape our field. I also spoke to many fellow practitioners who are struggling to make a living or secure health insurance as they cobble together jobs or rely on partner incomes. There are too many stories of public historians lacking support when facing sexual harassment (see Dr. Lyra Monteiro’s Twitter thread or Hope’s blog post) and others who risk losing their jobs while trying to do ethical public history within inflexible institutions.

I was disappointed to hear a few well-established public historians I respect dismiss some of these concerns as “career anxieties” or “entry level” folks needing to “pay their dues.” This is not an issue relegated to a few nervous emerging professionals—the widespread inability to earn a living doing public history affects the ability of a diverse range of people to access and sustain involvement in the field. Labor conditions also profoundly affect the (lack of) racial and gender equity within the field. Addressing public history as work is a critical link within the broader repair work discussed at #NCPH2019.

Omnia History’s Guide to NCPH 2019

Rachel Boyle and Hope Shannon co-authored this post.

Like many of you, we’re gearing up for our trip to Hartford for the National Council on Public History’s 2019 annual meeting. We’ll be there by Wednesday afternoon and look forward to immersing ourselves in the camaraderie and paradigm-shifting conversations so typical of this conference. This is our favorite annual meeting and our intellectual home base and we’re so thankful to everyone involved in its organization. We’re especially grateful to the NCPH staff, program and local arrangements committees, sponsors, and other volunteers who build such a welcoming space year after year.

One of our favorite things about the NCPH annual meeting is the plethora of ways to meet and engage other conference attendees outside of traditional sessions. NCPH does a great job making these events as meaningful and productive as everything else on the conference program. Below, we share some of the non-session events that we’re most looking forward to and offer some thoughts on why you should include an ample number of these in your conference schedule. This guide is not meant to be an endorsement of these particular events or a slight to those we didn’t choose—we just want to highlight some of what makes NCPH’s annual meeting a highlight of our year!

Questions to Ask Before Adopting a Digital Tool

After announcing Omnia’s database management services in my last blog post, I now offer a broader reflection on the role of digital products for small cultural organizations. Specifically, I want to assert that digital services and platforms are not ends in and of themselves, but merely tools to advance an organization’s mission. This is certainly not a new sentiment in the digital humanities world, but it bears repeating especially for small organizations with precious limited resources. It can be all too easy for institutions to spend money on digital tools or produce digital products that do not meaningfully engage audiences or advance an institutional mission; on the other end of the spectrum, some organizations are understandably wary of engaging with digital services because of the initial cost of change. I believe there is a middle ground where cultural institutions can responsibly approach digital services by asking how the tool will help the organization accomplish its work. To that end, here are three critical questions for cultural organizations to ask before adopting a digital tool, whether for social media, digital collections, database management, and beyond:

6 ways small cultural organizations can generate discussions about voting rights

The time is ripe for small cultural institutions to think about how they can engage their communities in conversations about voting, elections, and civic disenfranchisement. For one, we’re in the early stages of the next presidential election cycle here in the United States. We’ve seen several democrats announce that they intend to run for the democratic nomination in advance of the 2020 election and I think it’s safe to say that this presidential race will capture more attention than any other election in modern history. And even if we weren’t approaching a presidential or congressional election, we’re almost always at the beginning, middle, or end of some election. Here in Chicago we’re facing a mayoral and aldermanic election in a few weeks, hot on the heels of the November midterms.

In addition to the near-constant stream of election cycles, we’re now less than a year away from the beginning of the 19th amendment’s centennial. Celebrations of this important historical moment provide a framework cultural institutions can use to highlight issues related to suffrage, disenfranchisement, and human rights, past and present, in their local communities. Voter disenfranchisement has always been a serious human rights issue, and it’s especially pressing now as a number of states with voter identification laws on the books are attempting (and succeeding) in making these laws even more stringent and restrictive.

These moments are important because they present small cultural groups, including local historical societies and museums, with a number of opportunities to bring people together to think critically about the role voting, elections, and disenfranchisement play in their lives and in the lives of those around them. We never need a reason to talk about the connections between past and present– this can happen whenever, regardless of current events– but it’s particularly important that we provide historical context for and facilitate conversations about issues sitting at the top of the news cycle. High on that list right now are what I mention above– voting, elections, and civic disenfranchisement.

Using Database Management to Help Cultural Organizations Thrive

We are excited to announce that Omnia History is officially offering a new service to help cultural organizations center the needs of the public and thrive as agents of social change: database management. We have been doing this work for years and are intentionally growing it into a core part of Omnia History because we have witnessed how effective database administration can positively impact cultural organizations.

Five years ago, Hope and I became involved with a local historical society that was financially struggling and working to reorient its strategic priorities. Among other issues, the organization’s mailing lists, event registrations, membership rolls, donations, and volunteer information were all located in different software, spreadsheets, and physical files, if they existed at all. In an effort to prioritize outreach, a team of volunteers and I decided to install and maintain CiviCRM, an open-source constituent relationship management system that could consolidate the organization’s contact data. Since then, I have transitioned to a contracted consulting role as I continue to refine the system, streamline data input, and integrate forms into the society’s website.

Dealing with Workplace Discrimination and Harassment at Small Public History Sites and Museums

Let’s talk about discrimination and sexual harassment at small public history sites, history museums, and related organizations. A large number of public history organizations run with staff of three, two, or even one and many public historians spend part or all of their careers at places run by only a handful of employees.¹ Work under these conditions can be incredibly joyful, impactful, and fulfilling, but people working in these settings seem to face a special set of challenges related to harassment and discrimination. They routinely work one-on-one, sometimes alone, with board members, members, and donors, and often lack human resources departments or other internal mechanisms designed to help them seek protection and recourse against inappropriate and predatory behavior.

I recently asked a few senior public history professionals for advice on how we might better support people facing these kinds of challenges. One person advised me, a young female professional, to avoid drinking at work functions and to bring my husband with me whenever possible. This is unhelpful at best, victim blaming at worst, and it misses the point. I’ve already learned these lessons through personal experience and from whisper networks of women and others who have dealt with this their entire lives (hold your keys in your hand when walking home/to your car, don’t walk outside at night, never leave your drink unattended, don’t dress provocatively, and so on). Responses from the others were more helpful, though just as discouraging. They agreed that this has been and continues to be a serious problem, that little sustainable action has been taken to remedy it, and that we need to do more to support people working in vulnerable positions and who have few or no avenues of official recourse.

So, how do we deal with this? How can we better support people facing harassment and discrimination at small and under-resourced public history organizations? And, though the onus shouldn’t be on victims to stop predatory behavior, what can employees do to protect themselves?

Three Things I Learned as a Wiki Scholar

Over the course of the last eleven weeks, I had the honor of joining a cohort of historians, librarians, and other scholars in a course sponsored by Wiki Education and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). We received technical training on the ins and outs of Wikipedia and contributed to articles relating to women’s suffrage in anticipation of the centennial anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment and an associated exhibit on the topic planned by NARA. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to be a student again, and benefited greatly from the excellent facilitation by Wiki Education staff and thoughtful conversations with fellow Wiki Scholars. By the end of the course I contributed to Wikipedia pages on the Sheppard-Towner Act and Catherine Waugh McCulloch. Here are three things I learned from the experience:

Resource Alert: National Inventory of Humanities Organizations (NIHO)

The National Inventory of Humanities Organizations (NIHO) is exactly what it sounds like– an online database documenting humanities institutions currently in operation in the United States. NIHO, which was developed by the Humanities Indicators project at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, “encompasses not-for-profit, for-profit, and government institutions engaged in humanities scholarship and/or in bringing humanities knowledge or skills to various audiences.”(1)

I learned more about NIHO at the National Humanities Conference in New Orleans, LA a few weeks ago. Carolyn Fuqua, a senior research analyst at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and I both presented (along with several others) at the “Effecting Social Change Through the Humanities” session. She spoke about how the Humanities Indicators team designed NIHO to elevate the profiles of humanities organizations, encourage collaboration between them, and provide funders with a more comprehensive picture of the humanities landscape.
Continue reading “Resource Alert: National Inventory of Humanities Organizations (NIHO)”

Gender, Respectability, and Crime: Reflecting on The Leopold and Loeb Files

Nestled on page 112 of The Leopold and Loeb Files, Nina Barrett features an excerpt from noted social reformer Judge Ben B. Lindsey of the Juvenile Court of Denver who declared that the Leopold and Loeb crime was symptomatic of a “modern mentality and modern freedom of youth, with the misunderstandings between parenthood and childhood…the indifference to the rights of others in the stealing of automobiles, in joyrides, jazz parties, petting parties, freedom in sex relations and the mania of speed on every turn.”

Although Lindsey’s comments were perhaps unduly alarmist, he does hit upon how the Leopold and Loeb case struck a nerve in the historical moment of 1924. The trial became a way to explore fears about modern life in the Progressive Era, including anxieties about:

the limits and risks of science and rationality
the meaning of intellectual, urban masculinity
the effects of improper femininity and maternity
sexuality as action, orientation, and identity
the questionable security promised by wealth and respectability
the proper social and psychological development of children
the role of nature versus nurture

I want to dig into just one example of how this plays out in the case; specifically, how gender anxieties shaped the defense’s approach. Continue reading “Gender, Respectability, and Crime: Reflecting on The Leopold and Loeb Files”

Shaking things up (literally) in small history institutions

A couple of weeks ago, I presented about outreach and community engagement for small history institutions at the National Council on Public History’s first-ever Twitter Mini-Con, “(Re)Active Public History.” My presentation dealt with some of what I’ve discussed here in the past– mainly the important role these groups play in their towns and neighborhoods and how they can shuffle or modify existing priorities to ensure they play active and essential roles in the communities they serve.

More specifically, we considered why so many small history groups have, historically, prioritized collections-based work above other projects, how to adjust this model in the present to make more room for outreach- and community-based work, and how to involve constituents in a way that ensures and demonstrates institutional relevance. Some of the issues we covered were how to start this conversation, who to bring to the table and how to get them there, how to identify institutional priorities (and, similarly, how to identify what can be eliminated), using these self-reflective processes to build bridges between people across diverse communities, and how to make hard, self-reflective discussions part of an institution’s regular agenda.

I’m particularly grateful to the people who stayed until the end to engage in a rich and thought-provoking discussion about the realities of being a history and/or museum professional trying to do this work on the ground. I’m including our conversations here as a kind of part 3 to my two earlier blog posts (part 1, part 2) about community outreach and engagement in small history institutions.

Continue reading “Shaking things up (literally) in small history institutions”