Since graduating from UNC with my MSLS though, I've had my perception of historians and public history altered a bit. I'll go ahead and admit that to a certain extent, it still isn't my thing. I still consider myself an information professional and an archivist: someone who distributes the information others have gathered or created. I am the organizer, describer, tagger, processor, builder, what-have-you. I'm NOT a historian. But I have been willing to accept that the line between academic historian and public historian as well as the one between public historian and archivist are blurred and fuzzy.
This Tuesday was the 150th Anniversary of the Burning of Columbia. The SCDAH uncovered their newest historical marker to commemorate the event that evening. Dr. Tom Segrue spoke earlier in the day at the Columbia Museum of Art about the unique ability of historians to engage with the public on issues such as this painful Civil War memory. My perception going into the talk was that to be considered a "public historian" you ought to be actively working on interpretation or engaging with the public on a daily basis. I'd never considered that a public historian might simply be an academic willing to be an expert witness in a civil rights case or a professor willing to take media interviews in a time of crisis. So, what I got out of his talk was that a public historian is really any historian who interacts with the public. (Duh right?)
Well, what I also learned from his talk was that he lumped archivists, curators, museum workers, and interpreters into the category of public historian as well. I completely understand the latter three in that list, but archivists? We're not public historians, are we? Even when we create finding aids for collections, we're not interpreting the data so much as we are describing it with the intent to make it easily accessible for researchers. Despite our differences though, perhaps it's time for me as an archivist to open myself to being cast together with public historians. I've been unwilling to do it in the past in order to preserve a sense of professional identity. But the more I've worked on my current project, the more I realize that I'm doing the work of a public historian as well as that of an archivist. As an archivist, I'm creating a portal for research of heretofore rather unavailable information. As a public historian, I'm working to present that information in a way that draws people in and includes them in an ongoing discussion about historic preservation in South Carolina. I'm working at accessibility AND outreach/education. What a novel thought!
All of that said, I'm still an archivist at heart.
Above is a video of the unveiling of the Historic Marker commemorating the Burning of Columbia featuring the SC Dept. of Archives and History's Director, Dr. Eric Emerson, and Historic Markers Coordinator, Dr. Ehren Foley.