What is Public History?
The name of the NCPH blog – History@Work – offers a handy distillation: public history describes the many and diverse ways in which history is put to work in the world. In this sense, it is history that is applied to real-world issues. In fact, applied history was a term used synonymously and interchangeably with public history for a number of years. Although public history has gained ascendance in recent years as the preferred nomenclature especially in the academic world, applied history probably remains the more intuitive and self-defining term.
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Editing Historical Documents by This volume is aimed both at more experienced editors, who may wish to skip over the advice offered in the introduction, as well as at those who are new to the craft and want to know how to begin work on publishing historical documents of interest to them.
A Guide to Documentary Editing by For more than twenty years, A Guide to Documentary Editing has proven an invaluable tool for scholarly editors, editors-in-training, readers of documentary editions, and other students of American history and literature. This new, extensively revised edition of the Guide arrives in the midst of great change in the field. In addition to exploring fully the increasingly central role electronic technology plays in the editing process, this edition provides the most current treatment of the craft's fundamental issues. These include locating and collecting sources, transcribing source texts, conventions of textual treatment, dealing with nontextual elements, and preparing editions for publishers. The documentary-editing environment is more vibrant than ever, and the authors draw on this wealth of activity to include numerous examples of the Guide's principles in practice. The most innovative aspect of this latest edition of the Guide is a new digital component. Users may access the entire contents online through a dedicated Web site. In addition to offering the convenience of easy online access, this Web edition will include hyperlinks to relevant literature and will act as an archive for material from earlier editions. Most important, it will be periodically revised and updated, to ensure a Guide that is always current with best practice. The online edition is available at http://gde.upress.virginia.edu. Each edition of the Guide has become the standard text for scholarly editors, whether their focus is correspondence, journals, diaries, financial records, professional papers, or unpublished manuscripts. This print/digital edition presents this essential guide in its most dynamic and useful form yet. Published in association with the Association for Documentary Editing
An Introduction to Public History by Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past, Engaging Audiences is a brief foundational textbook for public history. It is organized around the questions and ethical dilemmas that drive public history in a variety of settings, from local community-based projects to international case studies. This book is designed for use in undergraduate and graduate classrooms with future public historians, teachers, and consumers of history in mind. The authors are practicing public historians who teach history and public history to a mix of undergraduate and graduate students at universities across the United States and in international contexts. This book is based on original research and the authors' first-hand experiences, offering a fresh perspective on the dynamic field of public history based on a decade of consultation with public history educators about what they needed in an introductory textbook. Each chapter introduces a concept or common practice to students, highlighting key terms for student review and for instructor assessment of student learning. The body of each chapter introduces theories, and basic conceptual building blocks intermixed with case studies to illustrate these points. Footnotes credit sources but also serve as breadcrumbs for instructors who might like to assign more in-depth reading for more advanced students or for the purposes of lecture development. Each chapter ends with suggestions for activities that the authors have tried with their own students and suggested readings, books, and websites that can deepen student exposure to the topic.
On Doing Local History by For over thirty years, Carol Kammen's On Doing Local History has been a valuable guide to professional and "amateur" historians alike. First published in 1986, revised in 2003, this book offers not only discussion of practical matters, but also a deeper reflection on local, public history, what it means, and why it is done. It is used in classrooms and found on the shelves of local historians across the U.S. The third edition features: -Updates to chapters that focus on the current concerns and situation of local historians -A new chapter on how the field of history cooperates with other arts -A new chapter on writing a congregational history -Updated references With the same passion (and now even more experience) that drove her to write the first edition, Kammen has brought her seminal work into today's context for the next generation of local historians. The new edition ensures that this classic will continue to move anyone interested in public history towards a better understanding of why they do what they do and how it benefits their communities.
Writing Local History Today by Writing Local History Today guides local historians through the process of researching, writing, and publishing their work. Mason & Calder present step-by-step advice to guide aspiring authors to a successful publication and focus not only on how to write well but also how to market and sell their work. Highlights include: -Discussion of how to identify an audience for your writing project -Tips for effective research and planning -Sample documents, such as contracts and requests for proposals -Discussion of how to use social media to leverage your publication -Discussion of the benefits and drawbacks to self-publishing -An essay by Gregory Britton, the editorial director of John Hopkins University Press, about financial pitfalls in publishing This guide is useful for first-time authors who need help with this sometimes daunting process, or for previously published historians who need a quick reference or timely tip.
