Working Bibiography

Bibliography

Primary

“Chinese Plan Big Celebration.” The Spokesman-Review, August 8, 1924.

Secondary

Tertiary

“Brian Shute, Ph.D - Speech Pathologist - Remembrance of Executive Order 9066 and the Japanese People in Spokane.” Accessed October 7, 2013. http://www.drshute.com/archives/000107.html.

“HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History.” Accessed October 7, 2013. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=8120.

Soennichses, John, and Doris J Woodward. The Chinese: Unwelcome Immigrants Who Helped Build the West. Spokane, WA: Spokane Corral of Westerners, 2012.

“Throwback with Jim Kershner | Spokane Public Radio.” Accessed October 8, 2013. http://www.kpbx.org/guide?entry=throwback-with-jim-kershner&id=142.

Images

“HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History.” Accessed October 7, 2013. http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=8120.

        Risaburo Nakai & Co. Store and Pool Hal, Japanese Alley, Spokane, ca. 1913
Courtesy Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (Shiosaki Collection, Image No. L2005-7.1)

Another Step Forward in the World of Digital Media

            Last week it was twitter, this week it expands to Flickr, YouTube, Picasa and Google Plus. Although the huge influx of information was overwhelming at first, and the pull to ‘surf’ into irrelevant content on these sites was tempting, I manage to find my way through to the other side (though I’m thinking of investing in stock in eye drops).

            Flickr was a great discovery and catches your attention immediately, although I will admit to being slightly confused about some things. It seems to be divided into two realms, Flickr Commons and Creative Commons. Flickr Commons was created to increase access to public photographs as well as allow the public to contribute their own considerable knowledge, while Creative Commons is an area for users to submit their own collections.  Flickr Commons content is contributed by various world institutions allowing you to see photographs you would have otherwise never seen unless you were a scholar digging through a dusty records room, seemingly cut off from civilization as you listen to the hum of fluorescent lights for hours on end.  These photographs have information about the content contained and relevant information below, including copyright info stating if there are any restrictions on using them. A couple articles explaining how this site is useful to museums and other institutions looking to share history as well as programs being created for such institutions are Five Ways Museums Are Using Flickr and Curate the Commons.

Flickr homepage screenshot

            YouTube was familiar already, although more from a browser standpoint than an actual uploader. I discovered I already had a YouTube account, which was a surprise because I have no memory of creating one.  Some articles explaining what museums can gain from expanding to YouTube are FiveWays for Museums to Use YouTube and Beyond Launch: Museum Videos on YouTube, the latter of which is quite long but goes more in depth of the benefits of using the online tool and guidelines to keep in mind.

            I already had a Google Plus account, though I only used Gmail and thus never did anything with the other applications, and upon exploring it contains a lot more than I thought it did, which is kind of intimidating.  A good article that compares Google Plus to Flickr is I Have Discoveredthe Purpose of Google Plus!, with the author having definite opinions of the two sites. Google Plus reminds me of Facebook, which I, at the moment, like more.  Google+ at Two Years: AnAssessment compares the site now to when it was created two years ago, and I found myself relating to many of the authors views, such as “It didn't help that when Google started touting its strong Google+ user numbers, the company failed to distinguish between people who have Google+ accounts as the result of being harangued into creating an account via Gmail versus those genuinely engaged in the Google+ social network.”  I was one of those people to suddenly found themselves with such an account when all I wanted was an e-mail, and never really explored it.  An interesting feature I was directed to was the Hangout feature, which reminded me of Skype, though a bit more user friendly.

            All in all, there seems to be many sites that bring museums and historical sites to the public rather than the other way around, a trend that has skyrocketed and seems to reach new levels every day. Even better news is that much of it is free to the public (up to a certain extent), which is good news to a college students wallet.  

Digital Storytelling Introductory Post

            School (EWU) started up again last week, and this post heralds the start of Digital Storytelling, a class that already looks to be both interesting and pertinent to today’s media requirements. I say this because it’s the second week in and I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming to the computer in order to set up a twitter account, as well as to brush off this lovely blog and start typing again. This first post is the opening to using multiple digital mediums in order to tell personal and historical stories.

            This week’s reading included Digital Storytelling from Wikipedia, The Value of DigitalStorytelling for the Small Museum, Stony Brook University’s DigitalStorytelling, various projects using the Curatescape platform, Two Must-See Digital Storytelling Projects from Mashable, and Four Inspiring Examples ofDigital Storytelling from Mashable.  Wikipedia’s page on Digital Storytelling gives a broad explanation and various uses in schools, museums and libraries, doing a fairly decent job though you should keep in mind it is Wikipedia and should not be taken as hard fact.  One of the better items on the page is the extensive (for Wikipedia) notes and references section and the external links list.  Another plus to this page is it brings in enterprises using Digital Storytelling outside of the United States.

            In The Value of Digital Storytelling for the Small Museum the author expounds on the pros and cons of using digital media in a museum, and how taking digital media classes has changed the way she works.  An easy read that gives the point of view of someone who actually has firsthand experience with the changeover from typical historical mediums.

            Stony Brook University’s page on Digital Storytelling does a really good job on explaining the subject and gives the seven elements of this technique.  Easy to navigate and understand, this site provides information on useful tools, copyright issues, and steps to create your own digital story.

Stony Brook University Digital Storytelling page.

            There are many projects that use the Curatescape platform to tell their stories, and this site gives a list of 18 various public projects. The Indy Historical, Raleigh Historical and Northwest Pennsylvania links take you to websites that aren’t active yet and provide no real information, though they do give you opportunities to donate.  

           

Bear 71 screenshot. Courtesy of blog 2 must-see digital storytelling projects

The two ‘must-see’ Digital Storytelling Projects from Mashable are Bear 71 and Welcome to Pine Point. Bear 71 is an interactive website/documentary that allows the user to see the interactions between man and nature. Interesting concept, but there wasn’t a lot of guidance for the user and the background music/sounds got annoying. Welcome to Pine Point introduces visitors to the no-longer-in-existence town of Pine Point, and the people who lived there and still reminisce about it.  The format was innovative in a yearbook kind of way, though sometimes the images would cover up the text.  There were lots of pictures, videos and sounds clips, though they would protrude over each other, and were a lot to take in.

            The Mashable list of four examples of Digital Storytelling were Bear 71, Pandemic, Welcome to Pine Point and Rome.  Pandemic was confusing because it was a real time interactive social experiment that is no longer active and so the website was kind of dead.  The link to Rome takes you nowhere, which is disappointing because the description provided sounded very interesting: “a multiplatform interactive narrative experience inspired by the music of Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi (featuring Jack White, Norah Jones and renowned composer Ennio Morricone’s original 40-piece orchestra from Italy).” 

The Studebaker Shop in Harrington

The Studebaker Shop in Harrington Wa

By Nicolette Reames

      

          Transportation is the key to survival for small towns, and Harrington is no different, depending on first horses, then trains, then automobiles to bring in visitors and residents.  The many businesses that once stood on 9 North Third Street tell the history of the changing face of the automobile business in Harrington. The Studebaker shop is the most current business occupying this piece of property in a long line of automobile businesses in Harrington.  It started out as a livery stable, most likely that of the O.K. Livery Stables owned by the McInnis brothers.  When the livery burned down in 1916, a new building was built on the land, and the first business to occupy it was the Harrington Garage. 

            By the 1940’s it had changed to the Harrington Ford Motor Co, with W.B. Hose acting as mechanic.  The business continued to change and by the 1960’s it had transitioned into the Harrington Motor Co. & Ford Sales with Howard Hose as mechanic.  By the 1980’s the building had become the Grange Automotive Service, also known as the Grange Auto Service Garage.  When that went out of business, the building sat empty for a while before A.J. Barth bought and renovated it in 2011 for his Studebaker shop.  Barth now fixes up run down Studebakers and services old fords, giving a nod to the history of the building.

            The popular shift from horses to motor cars also affected other businesses in Harrington. Stone pillars were built on either side of the north-central highway in 1930 on the approach to Harrington to welcome visitors. In the 1960’s the first drive-in restaurant, the Buy-n-Bye, was built on the north end of Harrington, along with a Chevron Station nearby. In August of 1970 Harrington received its first blinking red stop light, installed at the corner of Main and Third Street, where highways 28 and 23 intersected, in the hopes that it would be more noticeable than the stop sign that had been there previously.

            As the shift to motor cars had an effect on Harrington, so did the highway changes.  Designated in 1913, State Route 28 was one of the first cross state highways in Washington. Also known as the Sunset Highway, it runs right through Harrington and brought with it much needed visitors to the small town.  In 1923 it became State Route 7 and was already competing with Route 2 through Davenport as a major roadway for the small towns that littered it landscape.  The businesses in Harrington reflected the change, and by the 1950s and 1960s, Interstate 90 was created and redirecting traffic around Harrington, taking it off the beaten path.

Ford Ad. Image Courtesy of Larry Cebula.

Harrington Garage. Photo courtesy of the town of Harrington.

O.K. Livery Stables Advertisement in 1903. Photo Courtesy of the town of Harrington.

Advertisements for Harrington Garage. Image courtesy of Laura Glasgow.

Sources for this stop: Harrington 100 Years; Historic Revival in Harrington, The Spokesman Review, Oct 6 2011; Harrington in the Heart; Washington State Department of Transportation.

Civil Wargasm...and you know, other stuff.

            This week’s book reading was Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz, pages 145-281, covering chapters 7-10. Chapter 7, Tennessee At the Foote of the Master, Horowitz tells us about his visit with Shelby Foote, known for his writings on the Civil War.  During the interview, Foote talks about his own personal experiences and how they correlate with the Civil War, giving his opinions on race, the confederate flag, and his admiration of Nathan Bedford Forest, the Klu Klux Klan’s first Imperial Wizard.  Foote prefers imperfect Forest over virtous Robert E. Lee because “I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.” (p 156)

Shelby Foote. Photo courtesy of University Press of Mississippi

            Chapter 8, Tennessee The Ghost Marks of Shiloh, is about Horowitz’s visit to the battlefield at Shiloh.  He met travelers with personal family history with the battle and those who just had a passion for it.  One of the men he met, Bryson Powers, said “If they’d ever had a chance to talk instead of shoot each other, maybe that whole bloody mess would have turned out different.” (p 164) Horowitz also met Stacy Allen, the park historian, who spoke about the park’s history, revisionism, and tendency for people to forget the gruesome realities of war.  Another interesting character he met was Wolfgang Hochbruck, from the University of Stuttgart in Germany, whose interest in the Civil War also started when he was a child.

            Chapter 9, Mississippi The Minié Ball Pregnancy, tells of Horowitz’s trip to Vicksburg and his visit with Joe Gerache, a Civil War enthusiast specializing in the medical tools and knowledge of that time. Gerache’s most prized collection piece is the 9000 pound Parrott Gun, which was the Confederacy’s riverside cannon, he found in flower garden on land he purchased.  Horowitz’s makes sure to note that some of what we think is factual is actually made up of both fact and hearsay, like the story of a minie ball that passed through the reproductive organs of a young man then hit a young woman, resulting in her pregnancy.  He also remarks on the separation of black and white history of the Civil War, and how that is still in effect today. “Everywhere, it seemed, I had to explore two pasts and two presents; one white, one black, separate and unreconcilable. The past had poisoned the present and the present, in turn, now poisoned the remembrance of things past.” (p 208) Chapter 10, Virginia and Beyond The Civil Wargasm, is about the authors week long power-tour with Robert Lee Hodge through Civil War sites, dressed in Civil War garb and eating similar food of the day.  They hit as many sites as quickly as they could, keeping record of where they went and what they did. 

Civil War Field Hospital at Battle of Savage Station. Photo courtesy of  Sonofthesouth.net.

            The video of Ken Burns talking about the road to making his Civil War documentary was eye opening on what it took to compile historical photos without the use of internet, and the handling of a controversial subject.  He talked about trying to convince sponsors to support his project that was conceived to be too long on too broad a subject to retain people’s attention.  He also spoke about how documentaries have become a lucrative way of presenting history. 

            

            One of the book readings this week was pages 168-187 in The Power of Place Urban Landscapes as Public History by Dolores Hayden, which was chapter 7 entitled Rediscovering an African American Homestead.  It was a breakdown of how the memorial for Biddy Mason was planned and established on Spring Street in Los Angeles in the late 1980’s. 

             The other book reading was pages 1-144 in Confederates in the Attic Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz, which covered chapter’s one through six.  This book is about Horwitz’s travels around the South and his experiences with Civil War history, the people who have a passion for it and how it’s remembered today.  

            Never mind the slavery, have you dipped a candle yet? was an interesting take on how house museums and historic sites leave out certain historical facts and events in order to not ‘rock the boat’.  The author uses examples of Southern plantation house museums downplaying the role of slavery to get his point across. Sites that are making an effort to include slavery in their interpretations are also mentioned.

Horton Grove slave quarters at the Stagville State Historic Site. Photo courtesy of  the Stagville State Historic Site webpage The Structures.

            Another web reading was A white man remembers slavery in the Shenandoah Valley from Cenantua’s Blog.  It was a posting of a letter found in the local newspaper by the blog author Robert Moore. The letter was written by Jacob H. Coffman and was published in the Page News and Courier on January 1, 1932.  Coffman writes about his experiences with slavery, and concludes with how some of the slave holders he knew seemed to reap consequences that were a result of their slave holder status.  He also mentions some slave holders who were ‘nice’ to their slaves.

            The web reading Retouching History: The Modern Falsification of a Civil War Photograph by Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr. discusses the claim by Yale historian David Blight that Neo-Confederates are trying to change history by saying the Civil War wasn’t about slavery and that thousands of African Americans willingly joined the Confederate army, some even alongside their masters.  It uses an example of a picture of black Union soldiers that had been doctored to look like a group of black Confederate soldiers and is being sold by a pro-confederacy online store www.rebelstore.com as an authentic historical artifact.

            A website we visited this week was Sons of Confederate Veterans.  This website took on a different view of the Civil War than just about everything else out there.  A quote from their home page is “The citizen-soldiers who fought for the Confederacy personified the best qualities of America. The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight the Second American Revolution. The tenacity with which Confederate soldiers fought underscored their belief in the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. These attributes are the underpinning of our democratic society and represent the foundation on which this nation was built.”  The rest of the website is in the same theme. It offers research assistance on genealogy projects, history links supporting Confederate views, and a store where you can buy anything from southern music to children’s books on the Civil War.  This website defends that the Civil War was not about slavery all the while iterating that President Lincoln and the North were not about slave rights, and didn’t want to give slaves their freedom either.  They brush over the realities of slavery in the South, and while they don’t deny that there was slavery, it never goes into any depth on the issue.   There are links to report ‘Heritage Violations’, which are defined as an attack on the Confederate Heritage represented by their flags, monuments or symbols.

Sons of Confederate Veterans logo. Photo Courtesy of Sons of Confederate Veterans website.

Urban Memories

            This week’s reading was the first half of The Power of Place Urban Landscapes as Public History by Dolores Hayden.  It consists of three chapters; Contested Terrain, Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of Space, and Place Memory and Urban Preservation.  Chapter one, Contested Terrain, talked about controversies surrounding urban landscapes and what historical landmarks therein to preserve.  A thought provoking quote from page 7 in the book is “Centuries of neglect of ethnic history have generated a tide of protest—where are the Native American, African American, Latino, and Asian American landmarks?  Gender involves similar, interconnected questions. Why are so few moments in women’s history remembered as part of preservation?”

Suffrage Statue of Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and  Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Photo courtesy of  the National Women's History Museum

            Chapter two’s title is Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of Space.  It spoke about how urban landscapes have many layers of social history, based on race, gender, ethnicity or economic standing.

            Chapter three is entitled Place Memory and Urban Preservation and it addresses the memories that are connected with places.  By fully delving into a complete social history of multiple buildings it allows the possibility of better reaching the public.  This can be challenging, as “All of the participants in such a process transcend their traditional roles”. (p 76) It requires being able to step outside your comfort zone and work with people you don’t usually have contact with.  

Photo courtesy of Louisville.com

Week 5: The Perilous Journey Ahead

            This week’s reading was 397-416 in Public History Essays from the Field edited by James B. Gardner and Peter S. LaPaglia, an essay by James T. Sparrow entitled On The Web: The September 11 Digital Archive.  This article addresses the rise in the online presence of museums and historical societies.  It talks about the downfalls of such a shift, like the depersonalization of history, prioritizing digital artifacts over physical ones and possible damage to reputations but also the benefits, such as reaching a broader audience, creating more public interest in history and the ability to interact more with the public.  The article also includes a case study of The September 11 DigitalArchive, including how it came to be, what it includes as digital history, what steps the team had to take in order to make it happen, how it reached out to the public, the reaction of the public, and the steps they are taking to ensure its preservation.   I though this article hit on some real issues that museums face by trying to shift into the digital field, yet also covered the good that can come out of it.

            The other part of the print reading was pages 250 through to the end of the book Mickey Mouse History And Other Essays on American Memory by Mike Wallace which includes the chapters Ronald Reagan and the Politics of History and the chapter The Battle of the Enola Gay.  The first chapter went over the presidency of Ronald Reagan, his habitual lying and attempts to rewrite history, the ability of cinema to completely bungle historical events, and followed up with the reasoning that while mythologizing history makes for a good story, real accounts of history are what allows us to make better decisions in the future.   The second chapter went over the Enola Gay fiasco at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in 1995.  It discussed what the original scripts contained, the response of the Air Force Association (AFA) and subsequent media backlash on the museum and the museums rewritten display.  The chapter discussed the bad timing of the display, the problems of the postponement strategy, and their insufficient attention to the communities they wanted to represent and address.  It also discussed the development and relationship between the Air Force Association and the Air and Space Museum.  I though this chapter did a good job of taking an in depth look at what museums go through; the necessity of maintaining good relationships with other organizations, being able to understand who you are trying to represent and reach, and how big an effect the media can have.  The chapter concludes with what needs to change in the future by learning from this event, such as museums recognizing they will face opposition and should be prepared, to include different perspectives in their exhibits, to adhere to professional standards and for museums to stick together.  One of the sentences that really stuck out for me in the chapter was “More disturbingly, no one, right or left, took issue with the assumption underlying such initiatives—that the federal government had the right to mandate historical interpretations.” (p. 296)

            One of the web readings was DigitalKeys for Unlocking the Humanities Riches, From Ancient Rome to a Valley inVirginia: More Digital Humanities Projects by Patricia Cohen from Arts Beat.  This site lists several well done websites on historical events/places, including Rome Reborn, Railroads and the Making of Modern America, The Dante Project, the Spatial History Lab and The Valley Project.  My favorite was Rome Reborn and the video that goes through a complete digital reconstruction of Rome.

A view of the Flavian Amphitheater and surrounding city. Photo  courtesy of  Rome Reborn.

            The other web reading was “Lick This”:LOC, Flickr, and the Limits of Crowd Sourcing by Larry Cebula on his Northwest History Blog.  The topic was the partnership between the Library of Congress and Flickr and their posting of 3000 historic LOC photographs online and allowing people to tag, annotate and just generally mess with them. Of course, nothing very productive came out of it, as the project allowed unlimited access and was open to the general public.  I noticed in the comments user Patrick Peccatte references his own crowdsourcing project PhotosNormandie and the steps they have taken to make it more inclusive, thus allowing more useful comments to be given. 

            The video Big Data: Drowning inNumbers was a little confusing with all the technical jargon, but I think I got the gist of it.  Digital Data is getting cheaper, bigger and more easily accessible. But it also leads to the problem of less privacy.

            The other video was ProtectingReputations Online, which gave advice on being careful what you post online, as it could come back to haunt you one day.  I thought this was a very good video, and every school should show it, or something like it, to its students so they are aware of oversharing, which I feel is a very big problem in our society. 

            Digital Humanities and the case forCritical Commons was the third video for review this week.  It is a clip of a hypothetical situation in which Hitler was alive today and his reaction to the internet and the ability to share data and information quickly and globally.  I think the idea of this video is to dramatically illustrate the case for publically available copyrighted material by likening the absence of it to Hitler’s control of information and education during the Nazi era. 

Week 4: Historic Preservation, Accurate Information, and the Bogyman

            The first reading this week was section III from Mickey Mouse History And Other Essays American Memory by Mike Wallace included Preserving the Past: A History of Historic Preservation in the United States and Preservation Revisited.  The first essay spoke about the evolution of historic preservation in the United States starting from the colonial period through to the  early 1980’s, covering preservation vs. development, laws, and government backlash.  This author has a tendency to ramble on, considering the last paragraph in its entirety is one sentence twelve lines long.  The second essay picked up the ball from the previous essay, starting from the late 1980’s. It spoke about the hits and delay’s historic preservation has had from fuzzy worded initiatives, the decrease in available funding and the idea to promote restoration as a form of environmentalism.

            The reading from Public History: Essay’s from the Field edited by James B. Gardner and Peter S. LaPaglia included the articles Historic Preservationists and Cultural Resources Managers: Preserving America’s Historic Places by Antoinette J. Lee and Interpreters and Museum Educators: Beyond the Blue Hairs by Mark Howell.  The first essay spoke about what the responsibilities, duties and concerns are of preservationists and cultural resource managers.  The second essay discusses how to present information to the public as an interpreter or museum educator, as well as the difficulties of breaking into the field. 

            The web reading this week was awesome.  Professor Cebula’s letter was pointed yet polite, and pointed out some real flaws inherent in presentations at historic sites.  Even better was the rebuttal by the director of the site, which admittedly made me laugh, both with humor and disbelief that someone in that position could be so ignorant and unprofessional. 

            The website this week was the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It had a clear and aesthetically pleasing layout that wasn't confusing.  The goal of the group is so save America’s historic places, and the site has information on their current sites, histories, news coverage, work and volunteer opportunities, and how to join or support them.  This site does a good job of not overloading visitors with ads or plea’s for funding, as is often the case with preservation or historical groups, unfortunately.   

            The second website was the National Register of Historic Places page on the National Park Services website.  This was a clean and organized site that was easy to navigate.  According to the “About Us” page, the National Register of Historic Places is “part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources”.  This website has links to publications, databases, information on how to list a property and much more. 

            The PreservationNation Blog contains “stories, news and notes from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  I think it’s a good blog without being too “loud”, and the authors of the posts are from the Trust or similar organizations. It even has a Pinterest segment, which is smart as it allows for a greater reach of the Trusts goals to use multiple media outlets.

The historic farm house in Star, NC. Courtesy of PreservationNation Blog.

            The video of the week was on Eastern State Penitentiary. It was very brief and did not give a lot of information, but I gathered that there is a bit of controversy over the institute turning into a haunted house at night to bring in revenue.  There is worry that it trivializes the history of the Penitentiary, but on the other hand there are people who think it is a necessary evil in order to remain open to the public.   I’m not sure where I stand on this issue. In this case, I think it’s kind of a good idea as long as the site is not damaged further from the haunted house and it does not present misinformation on what went on when the Penitentiary was in use.

 

HIST 389 Second Week Post

            I liked Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory by Mike Wallace. It was easy to get through, offering a view not often thought about concerning public history.  It was interesting how it talked about how history is presented in different slants depending on the views of the people who put it together, talking about all the controversies on page xi.  It goes along the lines of how Ford created a utopian-esque view of the “Good Old Days” with his Greenfield Village and Williamsburg created by John D. Rockefeller Jr.  This brought to mind the Civil War reenactments I’ve been to that were so clean cut and left out some really big issues of the day.  The next article describes the development of museums and how they need continual evolution of encompassing more and more of history without blinders in regards to “class, race, gender and micro-cultures” (p. 43). 

            The readings in Public History: Essays from the Field, edited by James B. Gardner and Peter S. LaPaglia, spoke about professional historians and how to become a public historian, and the conflicts and differences between the two.  I liked the second article the best, Becoming A Public Historian by Constance B. Shulz the best if only because it clarified the training involved, the various jobs included under the title of public historian and where the field could be headed. 

            The online article from The New York Times entitled Museum Sells Pieces of Its Past, Reviving a Debate by Robin Pogrebin was really eye opening. I had never even considered that a museum would sell pieces for its own funding, weaseling its way around the myriad rules concerning such an issue.  There are so many different interpretations of the laws governing history museum collections that it leaves the items vulnerable to less than honorable intentions. 

            The other website, Museums and the Best of the Web Awards, included a lot of information and was a bit confusing. The title is self-explaining, will the results of the voting going all the way back to 1997. I noticed on the page it talks about the nominating process it says “you are encouraged to nominate a site other than your own”.  I take it you can nominate your own site, which I think is kind of like cheating. 

            Museum Blogging, written by Leslie Madsen-Brooks who is a researcher, professor and public historian, is an easily maneuverable blog, if a bit dry and confusing at times, requiring a bit more knowledge of the inner workings of a museum or related technology than the average person might have.  Though there are lighter bits, like the post Bringing the sexy back to public history, I prefer the other blog which I talk about below.

            The other blog site, Burke Blog, maintained by the University of Washington with various author postings, is like visiting a museum online. The posts had interesting topics that were relatively easy reads on new discovery’s, museum personnel, and links to numerous other sites concerning history and conservation. 

A beinakerlingar in Iceland. Photo courtesy of  Burke Museum Blog