Although the heritage scene all around the world is blossoming with new centres and organisations, often institutions don’t spend enough time learning and reading about best practices. This website developed by the Connecticut Humanities Council’s Heritage Resource Center (HRC) is designed to connect directors, staff, and board members with current thinking and discussion on the most important issues affecting museums, historical societies, arts agencies, and other non-profit cultural organisations today.

It has book reviews, links to useful Web sites and blogs, and a variety of reports, surveys, and tools all organized around eight core subject areas:

Audience Assessment & Evaluation

Technology & New Media

Marketing & Communications

Leadership & Governance

Finance & Business Planning

Collections & Archives

Museum Education

Public Programming

Community Center

A really helpful and useful resource.

As part of my job, I do a substantial amount of research in Singapore’s National Library and at the National Archives. Often I see groups of students coming to these places also trying to do research. However, most of them do not have a clue as to where to begin. I heard one of them go up to the counter at the Archives and ask: “Where do I find the history of Singapore?”

When I hear such questions as this, my teacher-mode kicks in and I feel like giving them a lecture how to do basic research. Since they’re not around, I’ve jotted down some of my thoughts which I hope will be helpful to someone just starting on historical research in Singapore.

Here are my steps to doing historical research in the library and archives:

Step 1: Identify what information you need

In a history project, some of the basic information required are:
-       Milestones (Important events arranged in chronological order)
-       Stories about these milestone events
-       Stories about significant people
-       Archival photographs/map

Step 2: Look for books on the subject (Library)
-       Use the NLB catalogue to check for titles on the topic you are researching
-       Locate the books, read them and extract information needed (see step 1)
-       Be aware of copyright restrictions

Step 3: Look for newspaper articles on the subject (Library)
-       Use an online databases such as Newspapers.sg to locate articles related to the subject you are researching
-       You may also read the newspapers on microform or on the computers at the National Library

Step 4: Look for photographs and oral history (National Archives of Singapore)
-       Use the online database to locate archival photographs or oral history on your subject.
-       If you wish to purchase photographs, you can order them online and pick them up several days later at the archives.
-       For the oral history, some interviews may have transcripts which can be read online. Otherwise, personally go down to the archives and retrieve the actual tape for listening. Take a notebook (electronic or pen and paper) and jot down notes as you listen.

Step 5: Look for other documents: maps, government and private records, speeches
-       Use the online database to look for other sources on your subject.
-       Personally visit the archives to retrieve and view these documents.
-       Take note that you have to pay for reproduction costs so be sure of what you want before making a reproduction request.

Once you have got your information, then you go on to your next major task of reading, compiling, thinking and writing…but that is another post.

The Australian War Memorial has completed the digitisation of the notes and diaries of Charles Bean, Australia’s first official war correspondent during WWI.

That’s more than 23,000 pages of notes made available online to the public, in their entirety.

This is great news, and ironic too, after hearing stories of bureaucratic obstructions in some institutions. Facilitating public access to historical materials should remain one of the key aims of archives, libraries and memorials. Bureaucratic barriers might just be symptoms of over-inflated significance of the “privacy” of documents and their creators, or inefficiency and ignorance of what the institutions have in store.

Kudos to the AWM for opening up the access of such important materials for all those interested, scholars or otherwise.

In a 2007 entry, we posted an item on “blogs as history”, questioning the notion of adding blogs to the myriad of sources that historians/history students use.

This recent Reason magazine article is an interview with Scott Rosenberg, who recently wrote a “history” of blogging.

At the end of the Reason interview, Rosenberg said of his describing loggers as the “curators of our collective history.”

In the future, when people write the history of our time, they’re going to have this incredible trove of information. It’s not totally raw, but it is much broader than the material historians have had to work with in the past. It encompasses a much wider swath of humanity. I can’t help thinking of that as a monumental achievement.

The British Library has announced the availability of 49 national and regional newspapers, dating 1800-1900, online.

The service is available through subscription, but articles from the  Penny Illustrated Paper and The Graphic free of charge. For subscription fees and access, click on this page.

Of interest to history students/historians researching British colonial rule, there is a section on the 1857 Seapoy Mutiny in India available. The library also has a massive catalogue that can be searched online.