Enlivened with many examples and the words of program planners, instructors, and participants, this book can show you a whole new world for your museum programs, and help you design programs that will allow your adult learners to enter that exciting and potentially life-changing world.

Creating tours that are interesting and educational for visitors (and guides ) is a challenge every historic site faces. Great Tours helps you focus clearly on the material culture and significance of your site and then shows you how to use that focus to train and energize your guides. You will be able to move your tours to a fresh new level that is engaging and educational for visitors of all ages and abilities. Readings and workshop activities frame the process throughout and allow you to develop what is most appropriate for your site, while working to strike a realistic balance between...

Times are changing at historic house museums and no one is more aware of this than the fourteen contributors to Interpreting Historic House Museums. These respected museum professionals consider the history of house museums and the need to look at familiar issues from new perspectives and using new methods. If your site isn't using a comprehensive interpretive plan, how can you create one? While doing so, how do you address contemporary issues like race and gender? Don't forget the physical either--does your property need a landscape plan as well as a furnishings plan? And, when your visitors...

This thought-provoking collection of essays is essential reading for anyone who cares about cultural institutions and their role in the community of learners. These institutions--often museums or libraries--have the power to profoundly alter our sense of ourselves and of the world around us, but that power carries with it obligations. David Carr challenges us to contemplate both the effects and the responsibilities, to examine carefully the nuances of these experiences. Yet a visit to a cultural institution is itself only one act in the broader activity of learning throughout our lives. Carr...

Why does Digital Imaging start with a glossary? So that right from the beginning readers learn to "speak digital." Koelling demystifies the process of planning and managing a digitizing project, including important issues of copyright and ethics, choosing equipment, weighing technical alternatives, and creating databases. These are not the trendy details that will be out of date next month but the core issues everyone needs to understand so they can make good decisions and plan projects with long-term benefits. Koelling reminds us, too, that these projects can be both fun and satisfying to...

Oral history is a marvelous force for empowering young people with a love of history. But educators today may wonder how they might use it to inspire their students while still teaching the necessary curriculum and meeting standards. In Dialogue with the Past Glenn Whitman addresses these concerns from his own rich experience and that of many other teachers and students. He helps readers understand the background and methodology of oral history, guides them in creating and conducting an oral history project in the classroom, and directly addresses the issue of meeting standards. Peppered with...

Oral history is a marvelous force for empowering young people with a love of history. But educators today may wonder how they might use it to inspire their students while still teaching the necessary curriculum and meeting standards. In Dialogue with the Past Glenn Whitman addresses these concerns from his own rich experience and that of many other teachers and students. He helps readers understand the background and methodology of oral history, guides them in creating and conducting an oral history project in the classroom, and directly addresses the issue of meeting standards. Peppered with...

Across North America, hundreds of reconstructed Oliving historyO sites, which traditionally presented history from a primarily European perspective, have hired Native staff in an attempt to communicate a broader view of the past. Playing Ourselves explores this major shift in representation, using detailed observations of five historic sites in the U.S. and Canada to both discuss the theoretical aspects of Native cultural performance and advise interpreters and their managers on how to more effectively present an inclusive history. Drawing on anthropology, history, cultural performance,...

Long regarded as one the leading texts in museology, Introduction to Museum Work in now thoroughly revised and updated. While citing recent changes in the museum world, the third edition of Burcaw's classic work retains its useful philosophical orientation and convenient summary format. All the basics of museology are here--the central issues are discussed and definitions are given for all the terms museum workers need to know. Every chapter includes practical exercises making Burcaw's book ideal for the classroom or for novice museum workers. Accepted by the Documentation Center of the...

In this call for better public history, Robert Archibald explores the intersections of history, memory and community to illustrate the role of history in contemporary life and how we are active participants in the past.