Final Blog

Over the course of this blog assignment, I've developed a respect for those who blog and those who do it well. Most of the blogs I had previously encountered were discovered via a Google search of some topic and I never put much thought into their creators, the blogrolls, or the motivation behind them.

I liked all of the blogs that I've discovered for their own reasons. Almost all of them provided blogrolls which, as I mentioned, I had pretty much ignored in the past. These links to other sites provided many resources for the topic of Public History. While they often had several blogs in common, I didn't feel this group offered up the same few links. They each had several blogs that were unique to their blogroll.

I appreciated what Public Historian: Public History on a Budget had to offer. The blog was updated on a regular basis which, through this assignment, I have come to realize is a difficult thing to do. Like with all of the blogs I reviewed, the information was provided for altruistic reasons. Its author had acquired a lot of useful information through her experience in the field, and the blog is her way of providing others access to this knowledge. Public Historian was also the first place that I encountered snap shots and I found theses 'previews' of the hyperlinks to be very useful.

The pastime of past time often provided criticism of current happenings in the Public History profession and I liked the way the blog often challenged what appears to be the standard way of thinking in the field. It also provided a different take on things as reported by the mainstream press. I think anyone who is interested in a particular subject, like I am with Public History, should be grateful for the alternative viewpoints that blogs like pastime have to offer.

Reading Archives pretty much stuck to the review of publications related to the topic of archives. It didn't offer much in the way of other archival blogs or websites, and that was a little disappointing, but it might be too much to expect for a blog that offers so much already. The fact that, as a web-based tool, it focused almost exclusively on an old-fashioned medium made it a pretty unique blog.

After looking closely at blogs for the first time, I am amazed at how much time people devote to blogging. Some bloggers may use them as a forum for expousing their views on a particular subject, from what I've seen, many use their blogs as a means to share their knowledge and expertice with others. I now appreciate the time that the authors of these Public History blogs have invested.

Blog Updates

Since my last look, The Attic has added several new posts. One discusses a recent Economist article about the boom in museums across China, and offers some criticism on the slant of the story.

Another, "Why Shouldn't Museums Be for Pure Pleasure," is similar to the topic of Bryan Adumchuk's recent post. The Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London has been criticized for its recent Kylie Minogue exhibition, which was considered too pop culturish by conservative museum professionals. Included is a link to a Times interview with the V&A Director, Mark Jones.

Next up: more archival blogs.

As the blog assignment starts to wind down, I'll take quick look at a few blog updates. the pastime of past time has a very interesting post about the place of a historian in the movie and television industry. Bryan Andrachuk writes about the low opinion that many in his profession have of the History Channel and about the recent chat he had with its Director of Original Programming, Michael Kot. Kot believes, and Andrachuk agrees, that it's all about the story.

"Having a strong story will draw people in," writes Andrachuk. "If people are entertained, they'll keep watching. And maybe, just maybe, we can trick them into learning something. For me, all history (that is, the product of someone's work, not the past as it happened) is about is telling stories, anyway."

We've been talking a lot in class about media conglomerates and, coincidentally, Andrachuk discusses the purchase of Alliance Atlantis (broadcaster of 13 Canadian cable channels, including the History Channel) by CanWest Global Communication, one of Canada's largest international media companies. (He discussed it in a previous post, as well). Interestingly, the CBC story he links to includes an overview of who owns what in the Canadian media. Very enlightening!

Moving onto Reading Archives, Dr. Cox provides a review of Photography Theory, which includes a "compendium of views and attitudes about the nature of photography, representing a wide range of theoretical perspectives."

For tomorrow: an update from The Attic.