History without Boundaries

From the OAH President
Pete Daniel

Daniel

In mid-March I spoke at the annual conference of the Society for History in the Federal Government (SHFG). Founded in 1980, the society is composed of historians including those who work in federal government historical offices, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Senate and House historical offices, the National Park Service, museums, and in academia. I reminded members that the society held its first conference in April 1980 and that then-Senator Robert B. Morgan of North Carolina, the featured speaker, promised to introduce a bill to free the National Archives and Records Service from the General Services Administration (GSA) and make it a separate administration.

Senator Morgan had addressed a crisis earlier in the year when Admiral Rowland Freeman, head of the GSA, recommended breaking up record groups and dispersing material to regional archives. Historians who have used the National Archives know what inconvenience, additional travel, and expense such a move would entail.

The news of Freeman's plan came to me at the Keyhole Inn, drinking a pint after a weekly basketball game with archivist friends. Normally I would have complained to my friends and hoped for the best, but at that time I was a legislative aide and speechwriter for Senator Morgan. He understood the situation and immediately wrote a letter to Admiral Freeman asking him to halt the records transfer. Even before Freeman backed off his regionalization plan, we realized that the larger issue was freeing the National Archives from the GSA.

This initiative proved a good example of how a group of archivists, documentary editors, Senate staffers, and academicians—with a little help from their friends—made a major contribution to preserving and making available historical documentation and in advocating an independent National Archives and Records Administration. Raymond W. Smock, who was one of the key players in the Emergency Committee to Save the National Archives, provides a complete account of this effort in this issue of the OAH Newsletter (see page 9).

In the afternoon session of that first SHFG conference in 1980, William Appleman Williams spoke. At the time he was president of the Organization of American Historians. According to Samuel Walker's report in The Federalist, Williams "lamented the misunderstanding and lack of communication that frequently exists between academic historians and those who work in other settings. He affirmed that he and the OAH would make every effort to break down those barriers." The OAH has answered Williams's challenge, and today we embrace all historians in our effort to research, write, and disseminate history. To reiterate that mission, I have made the theme of the 2009 Seattle convention "History Without Boundaries," and I mean it to be interpreted in the broadest sense. High school history teachers, college professors, and public historians explain the rich stream of historical scholarship that flows from books and essays.

On the SHFG panel with me was Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and the National Park Service's Chief Historian, Robert Sutton. The OAH and the NPS have had a cooperative agreement since 1994 and have collaborated on eighty-five projects ranging from administrative histories to historic resource studies to site reviews. Sutton has set high standards for historical interpretation with his work at Manassas National Battlefield Park, where he has held a major symposium on the Civil War and also developed an interpretive institute for park rangers dealing with Civil War sites. Sutton serves on the OAH Committee on National Park Service Issues, and we look forward to working with him on projects that could help educate millions of Park Service visitors. Archivist Weinstein responded to my remarks about donor-control in museum exhibits and suggested a public program on the subject at the National Archives.

As the joint OAH-NPS cooperative agreement illustrates, academic historians often spread history beyond classrooms as they consult, speak, write, testify, and make media appearances. Academic public historians, a growing constituency who train public historians within the university, carry out an important mission as they prepare students to preserve and interpret history through exhibits, community studies, preservation, websites, and films. It is important that as college graduates take jobs in museums, schools, archives, and other public arenas, they be grounded in history and in practices relevant to working with the public. Evaluating the work of public history professors is a pressing issue being studied by the Working Group on Evaluating Public History Scholarship, a joint committee of the National Council on Public History, the OAH, and the AHA.

Unity is more important than ever as we face the digital revolution that is reshaping our world. E-mails have replaced letters, Wikipedia has replaced the encyclopedia, Photoshop has replaced the darkroom, flash cards have replaced film, and on and on. We should face new challenges with the confidence gained by coping successfully with the typewriter, Xerox, fax, cells, and e-mail. Each new tool and innovation has the potential to make us better at what we do. Still, the sheer speed of the digital revolution demands agility and imagination.

It is essential that all historians unite as we face common challenges and become a "community" in the truest sense of the word. Instead of stressing dubious divisions among K-12, community college, university, and public historians working outside and inside the academy, I suggest that we think of "History Without Boundaries" as a theme that will strengthen our mission. The OAH must weigh in with support and encouragement for all involved in the historical enterprise, for despite our diversity, we are all committed to research and teaching.

The OAH has made significant progress in moving ahead in this area. We support the important and often heroic work that K-12 teachers and community college professors perform. The OAH Magazine of History has become an essential tool for classroom historians. Support from the Gilder Lehrman Institute has allowed us not only to reach a broader audience but also to hone content to better serve teachers. The circle of historical understanding begins with research and publication and moves through the historical community. The more inclusive the circle, the better our historical understanding and the greater our ability to nurture a wider interest in history.

We have enormous potential to "increase and diffuse knowledge," as the Smithsonian puts it. The public is not ignorant of history on purpose. Many people are diverted from serious reading by television, e-mail, the web, iPods, film, and so forth. Rather than whining about these distractions, or, worse still, fighting them, we need to work toward capturing these media and devising creative ways to use them to teach history. As the Executive Board prepares a strategic plan this year, it will consider how the digital world impacts upon our mission and how we might capture it and use it to our advantage.