Public History in Practice

This week I continued to work on the draft resolutions for various sites. The phrasing and formatting of government documents are typically a little antiquated and/or rigid, so the verbiage did not come as a complete surprise. But as I am becoming familiar with the language used in resolutions, it still feels a bit awkward. However, it is, at least, starting to make sense. That being said, the resolutions in question are shorter documents, so I am also still getting a feel for figuring out which information should be included and which should be omitted. As referenced in a previous blog post, these draft resolutions will be used in the nomination process for sites that are in the running for a historical marker.

This ties hand in hand with another task I am working on. Seminole County will soon be printing a new historical marker book, which I will be helping edit a bit. In order to understand what the new book will look like, as it will look a bit different from the last one, I listened to the county commission meeting on the subject. While listening to the recording, I heard how concerns sparked questions and then debates before the matter could be settled. And almost nothing ever played out in a way that could be described as simple. There was almost always at least one person with a dissenting opinion on the subject, though ultimately, you could tell that everyone who was at the meeting was passionate about showcasing the history of their county.

As a whole, I am finding that I am getting a better understanding on how local government and public history actually run and function in the real world. As mentioned, it tends to be complicated and a multi-step process where you have to get a large group of people at least somewhat on the same page. I had a general grasp of this fact, but this is making clear what the actual logistics of that process look like.

This week I also began creating an Excel sheet to act as a finding aid for a set of documents in an archival collection. The specific collection involves newspaper clippings. As a result, I had to determine how you would best want to organize and label them in a way that makes them findable and also skimmable, in the event that you were not quite sure what you were looking for and wanted to see if anything was useful at a glance. Somewhat soon, I will have to begin adding in the information from the collection to the Excel site.