Books in the American Association for State and Local History series

Museum Store Management is an essential resource for anyone planning to open or manage a museum store. The second edition contains an additional chapter on merchandising, many more illustrations and examples, and information on internet resources for museum store management.

The first comprehensive guide to identifying and interpreting items such as buttons, clasps, buckles, combs, and other items of personal adornment in early American museum collections and archaeological sites.

Alexander brings to life the stories of twelve ambitious leaders from the United States and Europe who helped shape the future of the museum world.

A guide to understanding digitization and managing a digitizing project. It helps readers decide if digitizing is for them, plan and manage, choose equipment, and manage databases.

Handbook for museums that wish to mount theatre productions.

Offers definitions for the terms that museum workers need to know. This book contains chapters which includes exercises. It is suitable for the classroom or for novice museum workers.

Often museums or libraries have the power to profoundly alter our sense of ourselves and of the world around us, but that power carries with it obligations. This work challenges us to contemplate both the effects and the responsibilities, and also to examine carefully the nuances of these experiences.

Museum and Historic Site Management utilizes the classic business case study approach to help museum and public history professionals think through different scenarios and understand/anticipate different points of view in resolving issues. The thirty case study topics include board management, fundraising, personnel planning, technology, and financial planning.

Today's successful museum leaders bring myriad skills to the table, creating a style that works both personally and professionally. This snapshot of museum leadership focuses on history and cultural heritage organizations to help readers understand the power of individual leadership and its relationship to organizational strength.

Preservation Politics is a provocative look at the changing prospects for historic districts, and how local preservation commissions, volunteers, and staff can prevent and reverse decline by thinking and acting politically on behalf of the communities they serve.

While exploring your nearby history, you will find that your community's schools have helped to shape its traditions and culture. This book helps you figure out what the schools in your community do and how they fit into the social and cultural context of your area.

Willa Baum once again shares her enormous knowledge of oral history in her second AASLH book, focusing this time on what to do when ending interviews, how to decide whether or not to transcribe, how to process data, and how to transcribe. Also provided are detailed instructions on auditing tapes, editing, working with legal agreements, indexing, and more.

This anthology explains the basics of oral history, and how to make use of it in research. It includes a significant collection of classic readings by oral historians.

In this work readers can discover the role local historians play, find out what the experts see as the values of the local history while exploring their theories, and see how local history has been practised by those who have dedicated their lives to it.

Tells you how to start an oral history program in your community, how to select the right equipment, and how to interview people whose memories are a living connection to the past. This book demonstrates what to do when the interviews are collected and to instruct how to transcribe and index them, store them, and make them available to the public.

Written for collectors and curators alike, Furniture Care and Conservation illustrates the full range of problems encountered in working with antique furniture and provides instructions for proper care.

This authors of this guide aim to provide a reliable resource and easy access to the innumerable issues and practices that historical editors deal with daily in their profession.

In this call for better public history, Robert Archibald explores the intersections of history, memory and community to illustrate the role of history in contemporary life and how we are active participants in the past.

Explores the trend for reconstructed historic sites to broaden their interpretation of early America by adding Native American interpreters to staffs that formerly presented from a primarily European perspective. This work examines the reasons behind this shift and the effects it has on visitors and performers.

Offers step-by-step instructions on the process of moving a historic building, from the initial decision-making to the actual move. This guide includes information on moving techniques, choosing a contractor, obtaining permits, finding a site, budgeting the move, and obtaining funds.

Suitable for students and practicing professionals, this book features museum professionals discussing contemporary issues and successful programs, and offering practical guidelines and information, along with references and illustrations.

Whether Christian churches, Jewish synagogues, Islamic mosques, Buddhist temples, or the gathering places for other faiths, buildings designed for worship are significant to both their own community of believers and their larger communities. Coming to understand the history of places of worship, therefore, is an essential element in understanding the historical fabric of these communities. Places of Worship offers the abundant insights of an experienced historian of American religion. Using illustrations from a wide diversity of congregations, Wind suggests ways in which answers may be sought. In two enlightening appendices, he also provides guidance to important published works on American religion and a directory of denominational archives and historical agencies. But perhaps his greatest contribution is to emphasize the necessity of viewing any religious community as a dynamic, evolving social organism. The author not only offers a comprehensive rationale for including political and secular influences from each era covered by the religious group's history, he also explains to the reader the most effective use of these resources. Because of its fresh perspective, this volume will prove invaluable to anyone exploring the history of American places of worship. Places of Worship is Volume 4 in The Nearby History Series.

Organizing Archival Records has equipped non-professional archivists to tackle the challenging task of arranging and describing archival materials. The 4th edition preserves the practical, easy-to-follow, step-by-step approach of earlier editions while updating its content to reflect current archival practices.

Collections management can be a daunting task for volunteers and employees alike. Archives for the Lay Person provides practical, step-by-step guidance for those managing all facets of archival collections at small organizations.

Dramatic impersonations accompanied by informed discussions are becoming increasingly popular methods of educating visitors to museums and historical sites. This is the first book to provide step-by-step instructions for how to conceive, plan, publicize, present, and pay for such historical presentations.

Museums and Millennials offers a new and innovative approach to attracting and retaining the interest of millennial patrons through an easy-to-implement and practical checklist. Check your museum's "A.U.R.A." (Affordability, Uniqueness, Relevance, and Accessibility) to ensure you are creating new programs and campaigns geared towards getting them.

Acclaimed for nearly thirty years as the most comprehensive introduction to research in North American family and community history, and now thoroughly updated, this book is essential for aspiring and practicing public and local historians.

Private History in Public examines history exhibits in small community museums and non-museum settings like bars, churches, and barbershops and argues that these exhibits promote dialogue on historical topics by engaging visitors with individualized perspectives.