Local Sites and Community History Reading Response

As I was reading the chapter “Community Exhibition: History, Identity, and Dialogue” the book, Private History in Public: Exhibition and the Settings of Everyday Life by Tammy Gordon, I realized a couple of main points.

First, Gordon details the way in which curators and/or museum volunteers/interpreters engage with the public. Some museums are most talkative and personal in their interactions and some aren’t. Those that were more personal, friendly, and engaging with their audience gave them an opportunity to not only excite and feed questions and answers off of one another but for each side to learn more about each other. For the audience to learn about the history and those that may have been alive when that event happened and for the museum curator/interpreter/volunteer to learn various ways to incorporate their audience into the learning process.

Second, local historical museums gives them a chance to tell their story to their audience. There has been a shift in the narrative of local historical institutions to not only describe the happy memories of their story but also the negative and/or controversial ones as well. This lets the audience trust the history of what they are learning but also question it in terms of their background knowledge, to either be corrected or add that to the institution’s narrative.

In the Public Historian article, “OutHistory.org: An Experiment in LGBTQ Community History-Making,” by Lauren Gutterman, she describes the background of LBGTQ digital historical projects and the impact it has had on the field of digital public history. She then describes the history of building the website and what was involved in its creation. Gutterman describes the struggle of trying to decide how the audience will interact with the website. Will the users be able to post content like on Wikipedia or will there be both scholarly controlled content and user content as well? They ended up going with some variation of the latter. In the article, Gutterman also details some other challenges that building the website has faced.

Looking at the two readings this week, it has made me think about my how I want to continue with my own project. From the first reading, although the content described in that one was based on physical aspects, it can still be applied in the digital realm. For example, I need to make my exhibits interactive that won’t hinder the learning of the history. From the second reading, I need to do some user testing to see how well my intended audience might respond to my website. Obtain feedback. I also need to keep in mind for my contribution part of my project, to perhaps have a clearer target for those that wish to contribute. Perhaps as the website matures, I can have exhibits for those impacted in certain communities and their ancestors within Ireland, those impacted in America, and those impacted in England, those impacted as farmers and/or merchants, etc. That way it will give those impacted a chance to contribute if they haven’t already.