How to Work With Micro-Influencers on Instagram
With businesses flocking to social media and competing for followings, contracting influencers as spokespeople is the go-to move. Specifically, micro-influencers, with their highly engaged followers. These popular users build their brand on authenticity, so connecting with them isn’t as easy as sending a direct message. A more thoughtful approach is needed.
The Power of Conflict: Why You Should Welcome Tough Conversations
It comes as no surprise that on the way to delivering on the mission, there can be disagreements, clashes, and maybe all-out battles. We set out to create a brave space to have this conversation and brought in an expert to show us the way.
Competing histories or hidden transcripts? The sources we use
In January, History@Work published Heather Carpini’s important essay on competing histories. Carpini’s appeal for historians to dig “deeper, past the obvious sources, into the lives of the people who shaped, and were shaped by, a certain place” is an essential call to action. This values- and human-centered approach to historic preservation is gaining traction. In this essay, David Rotenstein addresses some of the pitfalls of digging deeper into community histories.
Difficult Conversations with Volunteers: A free booklet
Difficult conversations with volunteers is one of our volunteer management things. We are all faced with having to “talk to” a volunteer at some point and we all hate the thought of “reprimanding” that volunteer.
What Is Shared Stewardship? New Guidelines for Ethical Archiving
Since the advent of sound recording technology in the late nineteenth century, anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnomusicologists have steadily recorded music, spoken word, and traditional cultural expressions around the world. Today, sound recordings like these are available in the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and similar ethnographic archives worldwide. These heritage recordings are valued for the unique contribution they can make to language revitalization and other cultural sustainability initiatives, but their public availability may occasionally cause concern.
The Second-Order Problem: A Participant-Centered Approach to Immersive Design
Kathryn Yu discusses applying the lens of situational game design to immersive experiences.
The Advantages of Being a Small Museum
Annual Meeting theme, Sustaining Vibrant Museums, and how it spoke to the abilities (or at least aspirations) of our institutions to meet with whatever comes our way and respond with approaches that honor the environment, the inclusion of different people and cultures among our audiences and staff, and the diversity of stories and substance behind the materials we use and create for education and engagement. One of the major strategies that recurred across sessions was collaboration and partnership across organizations, departments, and disciplines.
Museums, Immersion, and Transformative Experience
Can individuals repeatedly expect transformation with every transaction, at the snap of a finger or the opening of a wallet?
The Way We Do the Things We Do: Making History-Making Visible
Sometimes being on unfamiliar ground leads to new perspectives on one’s home turf. Through a Fulbright fellowship, Benjamin Filene spent this winter and spring exploring the public history scene in Finland. Toward the end, they were invited to Bergen, Norway, to give a keynote for the annual meeting of the Nordic Association for American Studies, whose conference theme was “Monuments.” they titled my talk “Etched in Stone vs. a Fluid Past: Monuments, Museums, and History-Making in Public.”
Case Studies: How Four Museums Are Taking Dramatic Measures to Admit More Women Artists Into the Art Historical Canon
Julia Halperin and Charlotte Burns examine how four museums are adopting different strategies to move the needle on the representation of women in art history.
Doing More with More: Investing in Earned Income
As the saying goes, “it takes money to make money.” Often museums feel they can’t risk their slim financial margin on speculative ventures, but not taking such risks comes with a cost as well—the cost of lost opportunities.
The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook: A Resource for Collaborative History-Making
In order to achieve broader relevance in the twenty-first century, both the historical landscape and the history profession itself must become more diverse and inclusive. But what precisely does this mean?