Sean Kheraj, a postdoctoral student at the University of British Columbia recently defended his doctoral thesis on the environmental history of Vancouver's famous Stanley Park. In most people's books, that' makes him an expert on the field.
Sean was recently asked to write a review of the Vancouver Museum's exhibit, "The Unnatural History of Stanley Park." The experience, which Kheraj likened to "witnessing the physical manifestation of my dissertation as a museum display," was a challenge for him. Every detail that the museum had gotten wrong popped out. But, rather than posting a negative review, Kheraj reflected on the role many academic historians could be playing as consultants in instances that they choose not to.
It's something that came up a lot last year in our UWO Public History discussions, but perhaps not something that regularly enters the consciousness of many academic historians.
You can read the review at http://niche.uwo.ca/foresthistory/resources/exhibits
Monday, February 2, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
New Zealand Museums: Good
I spent the Christmas break in northern New Zealand this year and dutifully visited a couple museums. The two museums were the Kaori Museum in Matakohe and the Auckland War Memorial Museum, incidentally in Auckland.
I must say, I was extremely impressed with the two museums. Even better than some of the world's best institutions such as those I visited in Washington DC last summer.
The Kaori Museum
Kaori is a species of tree that grows for thousands of years and is akin to the Redwoods of the North American west coast. The Kaori Museum is essentially a small town museum, entirely funded on ticket revenues and giftshop sales. It does have the good fortune of being able to sell large quantities of Kaori wood products which fetch a pretty penny. Nevertheless, any museum which runs on private funds is impressive. One that does it so well is amazing.
The museum has dozens of 'townspeople.' One for just about every role of 19th century life in New Zealand. These townspeople don't move much. Most mannequin's don't - Today's Special exempt. However, what's intriguing is that each mannequin has the face of someone who actually lives in the town. The tag might read, "This barber is modelled after Jim Smith who still lives in town and whose family ran the original barber shop in Matakohe."
Perhaps I don't get out much, but this was the first time I'd ever seen such community involvement in a museum.
I can't say enough good about this museum.
The walls are packed with old photographs - probably a large percentage of the archival holdings of the museum - each with a caption that viewers can choose to read or to ignore. Dozens of artifacts are on display, including many tools which I was allowed to try out - at least, I did try out and nobody said anything. Sensors in the walls took note of passing visitors and initiated coversations with some of the townspeople.
Needless to say, I was impressed.
The Auckland War Memorial Museum
I actually only got a chance to pop into the Museum, so I really only saw a small, temporary exhibit which I think was called "behind the scenes." It certainly put the muse back into museum. The exhibit was a collection of all the weird stuff the museum had collected over the years, including a baby orangutan which is being kept in a freezer "until they get around to doing something else with it." I must say, it was cute and intriguing, in a morbid kind of way.
Oh, and there was the stuffed deer that "had been in the women's toilet in the storage area longer than anyone could remember."
Apart from the weird and wonderful, the exhibit was also artistically and technologically marvelous. A giant wall of ticking clocks was the perfect - and extremely creepy - setting for peep holes, through which users could find any number of strange things. The atmosphere that wall of clocks created was unreal.
One aspect of the exhibit involved a series of dots spaced on the floor, each infront of a series of artifacts. To my sheer amazement, when you stood exactly on the dot, you could hear a perfectly clear narrative. Move one step to the left and the sound vanished.
If you are in the museum field, these are two museums you should definitely make the effort to see. And if you're doing an internship at a Kiwi museum, you should hop on a plane up to Auckland and check it out.
Kudos to the Kiwis and their museums. They were an absolute delight and an example the world should be following.
I must say, I was extremely impressed with the two museums. Even better than some of the world's best institutions such as those I visited in Washington DC last summer.
The Kaori Museum
Kaori is a species of tree that grows for thousands of years and is akin to the Redwoods of the North American west coast. The Kaori Museum is essentially a small town museum, entirely funded on ticket revenues and giftshop sales. It does have the good fortune of being able to sell large quantities of Kaori wood products which fetch a pretty penny. Nevertheless, any museum which runs on private funds is impressive. One that does it so well is amazing.
The museum has dozens of 'townspeople.' One for just about every role of 19th century life in New Zealand. These townspeople don't move much. Most mannequin's don't - Today's Special exempt. However, what's intriguing is that each mannequin has the face of someone who actually lives in the town. The tag might read, "This barber is modelled after Jim Smith who still lives in town and whose family ran the original barber shop in Matakohe."
Perhaps I don't get out much, but this was the first time I'd ever seen such community involvement in a museum.
I can't say enough good about this museum.
The walls are packed with old photographs - probably a large percentage of the archival holdings of the museum - each with a caption that viewers can choose to read or to ignore. Dozens of artifacts are on display, including many tools which I was allowed to try out - at least, I did try out and nobody said anything. Sensors in the walls took note of passing visitors and initiated coversations with some of the townspeople.
Needless to say, I was impressed.
The Auckland War Memorial Museum
I actually only got a chance to pop into the Museum, so I really only saw a small, temporary exhibit which I think was called "behind the scenes." It certainly put the muse back into museum. The exhibit was a collection of all the weird stuff the museum had collected over the years, including a baby orangutan which is being kept in a freezer "until they get around to doing something else with it." I must say, it was cute and intriguing, in a morbid kind of way.
Oh, and there was the stuffed deer that "had been in the women's toilet in the storage area longer than anyone could remember."
Apart from the weird and wonderful, the exhibit was also artistically and technologically marvelous. A giant wall of ticking clocks was the perfect - and extremely creepy - setting for peep holes, through which users could find any number of strange things. The atmosphere that wall of clocks created was unreal.
One aspect of the exhibit involved a series of dots spaced on the floor, each infront of a series of artifacts. To my sheer amazement, when you stood exactly on the dot, you could hear a perfectly clear narrative. Move one step to the left and the sound vanished.
If you are in the museum field, these are two museums you should definitely make the effort to see. And if you're doing an internship at a Kiwi museum, you should hop on a plane up to Auckland and check it out.
Kudos to the Kiwis and their museums. They were an absolute delight and an example the world should be following.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Book Review: "Remember, Remember (the Fifth of November)"
Parkinson, Judy. "Remember, Remember (the Fifth of November): The History of Britain in Bite-Sized Chunks." (London: Michael O'Mara Books, 2008). 182p. 10pounds.
The book attempts to survey all of British history through a chronological series of encyclopedia entries, each one page in length. Each page outlines a major historical event, figure or stage in British history, beginning with the Roman Invasion of AD43 and ending with the founding of the United Nations. The title, of course, refers to the Gunpowder Plot on 5 November, 1605, still remembered with the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day.
Parkinson has succeeded in creating an abundantly clear survey, which will no doubt clear up confusion many people have as to the order of events in British history. Readers can clearly see how events influenced or were influenced by one another; no entries appear to stand out as isolated from the rest, which is a credit to the author's choice of topics.
Each entry can stand alone and the book can be used as a reference, or it can be read through from front to back. Those who elect the latter will note that at times events or persons are explained in more than one entry, especially in cases where one entry is the subset of another - a battle and a war, for instance. This repetition makes it possible for readers to use the work as a reference book and should not be considered a failing.
Someone looking for a brief survey, or an undergraduate about to embark on a British history course, could certainly benefit from this book. Its brevity and journalistic prose make for light reading. Parkinson has done a fabulous job of creating what is essentially a chronological encyclopedia without leaving the reader feeling like they have been sitting with a copy of Britannica.
As the entries are short and without footnotes, the book is not of much scholarly use - though no encyclopedia is. There are a handful of instances that used direct quotations in which even a quick footnote or reference would have been appropriate so that readers interested in pursuing further reading could at least be directed. However, the lack of references was not a major issue.
Nearly all British historians will feel that their area of expertise did not receive proper treatment; many important events are only referenced in an entry devoted to something else. For instance, the South Seas Bubble gets a single sentence in King George I's article (p. 102) and nothing of its own. Likewise, many other important aspects of British history do not appear at all. Nevertheless, the task of writing two-thousand years of history in 150 entries is a major undertaking and many worthy events must be cut to make the project doable.
Since it is impossible for anyone to be an expert on a topic so vast, I am unable to comment upon the accuracy of each entry. However, I can say that the entries are fairly consistent, with a few notable exceptions. The articles "Munich and the run-up to the Second World War" (p. 174) and "Germany Invades" (p. 177) list that Britain formally declared war on Germany on September 1, 1939 and September 3rd respectively. Even a non-historian can see issue with this claim.
The most glaring problem the reviewer noted was in the "Magna Carta" entry (p. 53). In this article, the author makes a bold claim that the Magna Carta is "the most famous and most significant legal document in the history of democracy" (p. 53). This is a very partisan claim that most Americans and a good many others around the world would certainly debate. Given that the book has limited itself and decided not to provide evidence to support such bold claims, they should not be included. One cannot assume that a reader has the time or inclination to look further into the topic to come to an educated conclusion.
Apart from these minor failings, the book is certainly worth the cost and time required to read it. It would make an excellent course reading for the first week of a British history survey. More countries could benefit from a similar survey of their own history.
The book attempts to survey all of British history through a chronological series of encyclopedia entries, each one page in length. Each page outlines a major historical event, figure or stage in British history, beginning with the Roman Invasion of AD43 and ending with the founding of the United Nations. The title, of course, refers to the Gunpowder Plot on 5 November, 1605, still remembered with the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day.
Parkinson has succeeded in creating an abundantly clear survey, which will no doubt clear up confusion many people have as to the order of events in British history. Readers can clearly see how events influenced or were influenced by one another; no entries appear to stand out as isolated from the rest, which is a credit to the author's choice of topics.
Each entry can stand alone and the book can be used as a reference, or it can be read through from front to back. Those who elect the latter will note that at times events or persons are explained in more than one entry, especially in cases where one entry is the subset of another - a battle and a war, for instance. This repetition makes it possible for readers to use the work as a reference book and should not be considered a failing.
Someone looking for a brief survey, or an undergraduate about to embark on a British history course, could certainly benefit from this book. Its brevity and journalistic prose make for light reading. Parkinson has done a fabulous job of creating what is essentially a chronological encyclopedia without leaving the reader feeling like they have been sitting with a copy of Britannica.
As the entries are short and without footnotes, the book is not of much scholarly use - though no encyclopedia is. There are a handful of instances that used direct quotations in which even a quick footnote or reference would have been appropriate so that readers interested in pursuing further reading could at least be directed. However, the lack of references was not a major issue.
Nearly all British historians will feel that their area of expertise did not receive proper treatment; many important events are only referenced in an entry devoted to something else. For instance, the South Seas Bubble gets a single sentence in King George I's article (p. 102) and nothing of its own. Likewise, many other important aspects of British history do not appear at all. Nevertheless, the task of writing two-thousand years of history in 150 entries is a major undertaking and many worthy events must be cut to make the project doable.
Since it is impossible for anyone to be an expert on a topic so vast, I am unable to comment upon the accuracy of each entry. However, I can say that the entries are fairly consistent, with a few notable exceptions. The articles "Munich and the run-up to the Second World War" (p. 174) and "Germany Invades" (p. 177) list that Britain formally declared war on Germany on September 1, 1939 and September 3rd respectively. Even a non-historian can see issue with this claim.
The most glaring problem the reviewer noted was in the "Magna Carta" entry (p. 53). In this article, the author makes a bold claim that the Magna Carta is "the most famous and most significant legal document in the history of democracy" (p. 53). This is a very partisan claim that most Americans and a good many others around the world would certainly debate. Given that the book has limited itself and decided not to provide evidence to support such bold claims, they should not be included. One cannot assume that a reader has the time or inclination to look further into the topic to come to an educated conclusion.
Apart from these minor failings, the book is certainly worth the cost and time required to read it. It would make an excellent course reading for the first week of a British history survey. More countries could benefit from a similar survey of their own history.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Journal Articles in an RSS feed?
Has anyone come across an academic journal that releases its contents in an RSS feed that users can sign up for? Would certainly make it easier to keep up with the latest scholarship.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
History in the UWO Bookstore
I went into the UWO bookstore the other day to look for Christmas presents to myself. I had a walk around the non-textbook part of the store, which accounts for about a quarter of the inventory. To my surprise, books about history and historiography in this "popular" section included four shelves. That's more than all the fiction combined; it's four times more than the comedy, four times more than the cooking, and twice as much as the biography.
Guess there's more of a market for history out there than I thought.
Guess there's more of a market for history out there than I thought.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Visualization of Newspaper Content
I made a quick visualization of what the people of Canada are saying about the current coalition that seems imminent in Canadian federal politics. The visualization is made with Wordle, which is a snap to use.
The first is the frequency of word use amongst commenters to the article: " There were 264 comments in total.
This second one is the word frequency of commenters on the National Post article, "Dion mortgages federalist ideals to sign on with separatists." The National Post tends to lean to the right on political issues. There were 64 comments to this article.
Both articles essentially say the same thing, but with opposite perspectives on what makes good politics.
It's interesting to note the slight differences in the two. In the first article, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the clear focus, whereas his name is noticeably smaller in the pro-Harper National Post article.
Likewise, "Quebec" is fairly prominent in the National Post article, which suggests commenters frequently pointed to the fact that this Liberal led coalition will involve the separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois. To the right, this is akin to a deal with the devil. In The Star, "Quebec" is barely visible - you can squint to see it next to "People."
There are plenty of other assumptions you could make about the contents of these comments and the worries of both sides based on the visualizations, some of which might even be true. And, I know it's not really history, but one day it will be.
The first is the frequency of word use amongst commenters to the article: " There were 264 comments in total.
This second one is the word frequency of commenters on the National Post article, "Dion mortgages federalist ideals to sign on with separatists." The National Post tends to lean to the right on political issues. There were 64 comments to this article.
Both articles essentially say the same thing, but with opposite perspectives on what makes good politics.
It's interesting to note the slight differences in the two. In the first article, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the clear focus, whereas his name is noticeably smaller in the pro-Harper National Post article.
Likewise, "Quebec" is fairly prominent in the National Post article, which suggests commenters frequently pointed to the fact that this Liberal led coalition will involve the separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois. To the right, this is akin to a deal with the devil. In The Star, "Quebec" is barely visible - you can squint to see it next to "People."
There are plenty of other assumptions you could make about the contents of these comments and the worries of both sides based on the visualizations, some of which might even be true. And, I know it's not really history, but one day it will be.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Great Example of Teaching History
If anyone is looking for an amazing way to teach school children about Canadian settlement, check out Joe Ralph's blog, which features a short video of Canadian school teacher, Mike Ward and his hands on approach to teaching history.
It's amazing what you can do with a little bit of dirt and some plastic barnyard animals.
Kudos to Mike and his creativity.
It's amazing what you can do with a little bit of dirt and some plastic barnyard animals.
Kudos to Mike and his creativity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)