The IFPH-FIHP, together with the NCPH and other associations and cultural institutions, sponsors an important workshop on Public History which will take place at the History and Civilisation Department, European University Institute, in Florence-Fiesole, Italy, 11th, 12th and 13th February 2015. The goals of the workshop, the name of the participants and the full programme are published below. Two professors in the History and Civilization Department at the EUI shared the scientific organisation with the responsible of this blog: Prof. Luca Molà and Prof. Lucy Riall. Sandra Toffolo, project manager for European History Primary Sources coordinates the administration of the workshop. Who is, in general, interested by Public History, the interconnection between the discipline and the media, the differences between academic and public history, the public history job market and digital public history issues, is warmly encouraged to attend this workshop open freely to everybody.

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Public History and the Media

: Photography by Serge Noiret for the Workshop "Public History and the Media" (San Francisco - March 2014)

In recent decades, public enthusiasm for history and popular engagement with the past has grown dramatically. The popularity of history is manifested most visibly in the proliferation of television documentaries and historical dramas but it is also discernible in the rebirth of the historical novel, the organization of large-scale commemorations of historical anniversaries, the development of new historical museums and exhibitions, re-enactments and living history activities and the emergence of public history as a separate field of academic study. Digitization has also brought history and historical research to the broader public in hitherto unconceivable ways. Yet, for the most part, and with some notable exceptions, academic historians have remained extraneous to these developments, and their relationship to the public is different from that of public historians.

Is this difference between academic and public historians only about different professional ambitions, separate audiences and a different use of communication media? While it is not possible to become a public historian without an academic background, it is possible to be an academic historian without engaging in public history. Both are professional historians working with the past: their roles and their audiences are complementary although their practices are different in terms of methodology and forms of communication. Moreover, the development of public history raises questions about historical interpretation and the political use of the past that concern all historians, and should provoke a debate about ownership of the past in which both academic and public historians have much to contribute.

This workshop will take place at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy and is organised by the History and Civilisation Department, The Historical Archives of the European Union and the Max Weber Programme’s Academic Careers Observatory. The scientific organizers, Luca Molà, Serge Noiret and Lucy Riall, brought together a number of leading practitioners in the field of public history and the media to discuss the current state of the field and in order to explore the relationship between public history and academic history. The first day of the workshop will be given over to exploring the relationship between history and media culture, with panels on oral history, publishing and teaching, films and the phenomenon of so-called ‘media dons’. The second day will focus on digital public history tools, practices and narratives. The third day will deal with the history of public history in the USA, discuss public history as an alternative career and look at public history in museums and exhibitions.

: Photography by Serge Noiret: Florence from the Badia Fiesolana, European University Institute

Day 1 - Wednesday 11 February 2015 – Villa Schifanoia, Sala Europa

8.30-9.00 Registration (Sala Bandiere)

9.00-9.30 Welcome and Introduction

9.30-11.00 Session 1 - Oral History

Chair: Luisa Passerini (EUI)

‘L’Archivio degli Iblei’ and ‘Terramatta’: Sharing Memories Publically - Chiara Ottaviano (Cliomedia Officina, Turin)

Oral History and Video Performance - Giovanni Contini Bonacossi (Associazione Italiana Storia Orale)

‘Italy in a Day’ by Gabriele Salvatores: The First Italian User Generated Film - Ilaria Castiglioni (Indiana Production, Milan)

11.00-11.30 Coffee Break

11.30-13.00 Session 2 - Publishing

Chair: Lucy Riall (EUI)

Big History: Making New History Books into Major Events - Simon Winder (Penguin)

From Written to Live History: A Publisher’s Experience - Giuseppe Laterza (Laterza Editore)

13.00-14.30 Lunch

14.30-16.00 Session 3 - Teaching Public History and the Use of Textbooks

Chair: Stéphane Van Damme (EUI)

Inventing Europe: Teaching Europe Through the Lens of Technology - Suzanne Lommers (Foundation for the History of Technology)

Master Narratives and History Education: Wasn’t the Spanish Reconquest Actually a Conquest? - Mario Carretero (EUI & Universidad Autonoma Madrid)

Teaching Digital Public History - Enrica Salvatori (Università degli Studi di Pisa)

16.00-16.15 Break

16.15-17.15 Session 4 - TV and Radio

Chair: Youssef Cassis (EUI)

Broadcasting History: The Constraints and Possibilities of the Medium - Luca Molà (EUI) and Lucy Riall (EUI) in conversation with Amanda Vickery (Queen Mary University of London)

17.15-17.45 Coffee Break

17.45-20.15 Rai Fiction Film: Un mondo nuovo - Altiero Spinelli

Introduction

Pier Virgilio Dastoli (Consiglio Italiano del Movimento Europeo) and Alberto Negrin (Director)

Projection of the Film (with English subtitles)

Q & A

Day 2 - Thursday 12 February 2015 – Historical Archives of the European Union, Villa Salviati

9.00-9.45 Keynote Lecture - What is Digital Public History? - Mark Tebeau (Arizona State University)

9.45-11.15 Session 5 - Digital Public History Narratives

Chair: Rebecca Conard (Middle Tennessee State University)

Urban Media Archive in the City of Lviv: From Collecting to Engaging - Bohdan Shumylovych (EUI & Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe)

CENDARI: The Collaborative European Digital Archive Infrastructure for the Study of WW1 and Medieval Culture - Andrea Buchner (University of Birmingham)

From the War to the Web: Crossing Borders with the Europeana 1914-1918 Project - Ad Pollé (Europeana)

11.15-11.45 Coffee Break

11.45-13.15 Session 6 - Digital Archives

Chair: Dieter Schlenker (EUI-Historical Archives of the European Union)

The Medici Archive: Private Collection and Public Use - Alessio Assonitis (The Medici Archive Project)

The Venice Time Machine Project - Frédéric Kaplan (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

13.15-15.00 Lunch

15.00-16.30 Session 7 - Mobile and Time-Based History

Chair: Mark Tebeau (Arizona State University)

Memory Sharing and the New Media in Exhibiting Florence 1940-1944 - Valeria Galimi (Università della Tuscia)

Oral History Contents in the Web: The Memoro Archive - Luca Novarino (Memoro Project)

In Susan Horner’s Florence - Alyson Price (The British Institute of Florence)

16.30-17.00 Coffee Break

17.00-18.30 Session 8 - European Narratives

Chair: Federico Romero (EUI)

Writing a New History of Europe - Frédéric Clavert (Labex EHNE, Paris)

Using EU Websites for the History of European Integration - Dieter Schlenker (EUI-Historical Archives of the European Union)

HistoGraph: Human and Machine Computation for European Integration Studies - Lars Wieneke (CVCE Luxembourg)

Day 3 - Friday 13 February 2015 – Badia Fiesolana, Refectory

9.00-10.30 Session 9 - Public History in the USA

Chair: Serge Noiret (EUI)

The Pragmatic Turn in American Historical Thought and Public History Education in the United States - Rebecca Conard (Middle Tennessee State University)

Reflective Practice: Public History’s Signature Pedagogy - Patricia Mooney-Melvin (Loyola University Chicago)

Public History in the 21^st Century: Entrepreneurial Practice within a Shifting Professional Market - Patrick Moore (President National Council on Public History; University of West Florida, Pensacola; Historical Research Associates)

10.30-11.00 Coffee Break

: Photography by Serge Noiret, Florence from Bagno a Ripoli

11.00-13.00 Session 10 - EUI HEC Alumni Roundtable

Which Kind of Public Historians Are We? Public History as an Alternative Job Market for EUI Alumni -

Chair: Thomas Cauvin (University of Louisiana at Lafayette)

Speakers:

Dan H. Andersen (Freelance Historian, Reenactor, and Writer, Copenhagen)
Jozefien De Bock (Curator Project Migration, STAM -City Museum Ghent)
Christine Dupont (European Parliament-House of History)
Torsten Feys (Public History Programme Ghent University)
Ciaran O’Scea (Curator, Irish and the Spanish Monarchy Exhibition, Archivo General de Simancas)
Sven Mesinovic (Museumspädagoge (freelance) Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin)
Markus J. Prutsch (European Parliament)
Aurora Savelli (Portale ‘Storia di Firenze’)
Sandra Toffolo (EUI-European History Primary Sources)
Gerben Zaagsma (Project Anne Frank, Lichtenberg-Kolleg - the Göttingen Institute of Advanced Study)

13.00-14.30 Lunch

14.30-17.00 Session 11 - Museums and Exhibitions

Chair: Luca Molà (EUI)

Narrating Europe in a Museum? The House of European History - Étienne Deschamps (European Parliament)

Origins and Evolution of a Private Museum - Stefania Ricci (Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, Florence)

Museum-Based Research: The View from the Victoria & Albert - Bill Sherman (Victoria & Albert Museum) & Marta Ajmar (Victoria & Albert Museum)

17.00-17.30 Concluding Remarks and Coffee

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Scientific sponsors:

On April 18th 2014, the Digital Public Library of America's celebrated its anniversary: a first year of public access on the web.

The DPLA is a platform that connects openly the online contents of many libraries, archives, museums and cultural institutions around the USA into a single portal. Everybody can search this digital library and the digital bookshelf in the DPLA is now made of many thousands of single e-books titles from many different digital library partners in the USA.

From a user's point of view, "DPLA offers a single point of access to millions of items from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Users can browse and search DPLA’s collections by timeline, map, virtual bookshelf, and faceted search; save and share customized lists of items; explore digital exhibitions; and interact with DPLA-powered apps in the app library."

The most simple URL ever used on the web "dp.la", is today an expanding digital library offering worldwide access to US open digital humanities culture. "The DPLA Digital Hubs Program is designed to establish a national network out of the over forty state/regional digital libraries and myriad large digital libraries in the US, bringing together digitized content from across the country into a single access point for end users, and an open platform for developers". Because the DPLA also fosters collaboration with independent developers: the "DPLA's application programming interface (API) and open data can be used by software developers, researchers, and others to create novel environments for learning, tools for discovery, and engaging apps".

But the project started in October 2011 at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: "Hundreds of public and research librarians, innovators, digital humanists, and other volunteers—organized into six work-streams and led by a distinguished Steering Committee—helped to scope, design, and construct the DPLA." The DPLA is guided by a Board of Directors "comprised of leading public and research librarians, technologists, intellectual property scholars, and business experts" from around the USA and is based in the 19th century building (1848) of the Boston Public Library. Today, former Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, pioneer Digital Historian Dan Cohen is DPLA Executive Director. (DPLA staff page and Historical Materials page).

To celebrate the anniversary, the non-profit library network announced six new partnerships with major digital libraries and archives: the US Government Printing Office, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the California Digital Library, the Connecticut Digital Archive, the Indiana Memory and the Montana Memory Project.

Very soon we may think that the DPLA together with Europeana, the European Digital Library, will form the nucleus of a World Digital Public Library open to everybody in the world accessing the internet.

Already in November 2011, the "two major digital library networks have reached an agreement to collaborate in ways that will make a large part of the world's cultural heritage available to a large part of the world's population." They both decided to work together to promote the "interoperability" of their meta-data's. Early Modern historian, author of The Case for Books, Robert Darnton -at that time member of the DPLA Steering Committee and University Librarian at the University of Harvard- said, "The association between the DPLA and Europeana means that users everywhere will eventually have access to the combined riches of the two systems at a single click. The aggregated databases will include many millions of books, pamphlets, newspapers, manuscripts, images, recordings,

On 8 February 2013, the Digital Public Library of America released a new version of its Metadata Application Profile (MAP): "This new version is designed to build on the experience of the Europeana Data Model (EDM)" allowing the sharing of the Europeana metadata model. "The DPLA and Europeana have also collaborated on a virtual exhibition, exploring the stories of Europeans migrating to the US: Leaving Europe: A New Life in America' exhibition.videos, and other materials in many formats." And Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana, welcomed the agreement, saying that "Europeana was designed to be open and interoperable, and to be able to collaborate with the DPLA is a validation of that aim. By this combined effort on two continents, Europeana and the DPLA hope to promote the creation of a global network with partners from around the world."

Looking at this important partnership we may say that more then the digital library contents, the richness and innovative peculiarity of the DPLA project embedded in the semantic Web 3.0, is based on metadata exchange, interoperability of metadata and, above all, on a full Open Access to all the DPLA metadata.

A recent post published by Megan Geuss, staff editor for the blog Ars Tecnica dedicated from 1998 to IT and Digital Technology issues in the USA (Digital Public Library of America to add millions of records to its archive) wrote that "the DPLA says that it has amassed more than seven million digitized items in its archives to date, and in 2013 attracted more than one million unique hits to its website. But the more impressive numbers come from the fact that the digital library made its metadata available to anyone. It reported today that over the year it received nine million hits to its API. Some of the apps that developers have made with the database include “a smartphone app called OpenPics that shows materials from DPLA related to the location where you are standing; a Pinterest-style app called Culture Collage that shows thumbnails of images related to a particular search on an endlessly scrolling page; and an app called FindDPLA that helps Wikipedia editors locate helpful primary sources to cite in their articles.” With third-party apps, the DPLA isn't just a public library, it lets anyone build their own public library to suit their needs."