SHA 2012

New NPS collections web site

The lack of blogging has been due to too much going on rather than too little! But I hope I can share projects and other news over the next few months.

July always seems early to be thinking about a January conference, but the Society for Historical Archaeology conference in Baltimore had its deadline for submissions yesterday… . My topic will be “Online archaeology databases and the public” and I mean to talk about the new NPS website, as well as other online catalogs. The Mount Vernon site - 400 extremely well described objects, in a rich context – makes a great contrast. Which is more useful to the public?

There was a great technical leaflet in the AASLH publication” Designing Education Programs that Connect Students to Collections”. It focuses on planning educational content around objects, but I think much of it applies to online collections. The national educational curriculum is doing little to help the social sciences. And unless you want to appeal to a purely local audience the different state standards make creating lessons plans difficult. It is mentioned here - and I discovered this many years ago with the Jamestown modules - it useful to look at the English learning standards which are more focused on reading for understanding than the History ones which, at least in Virginia tend to be more fact based. 

I’d be interested in anyone has site or articles looking at using online collections.