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What is public history? As the new H-Public welcome message says, that’s the $64,000 question! A clear definition of public history remains elusive, yet it is always worth talking about. As a follow-up to two recent public history conferences, “History and the Public” held at Swansea University in Wales (http://www.swansea.ac.uk/history/publichistory/index.htm) and the National Council on Public History conference held in Santa Fe, New Mexico (http://www.ncph.org/2007annualmtg.html), H-Public is hosting an online post-conference discussion that builds on conversations and presentations at the two meetings and extends these into our cyber-community. Our original ambitios for this forum was to have video and/or audio links to presentations from both conferences. It turned out that this was *over*ambitious (maybe next year!) so we are starting somewhat more modestly, but still, I think, provocatively, with the following offerings: 1) a posting from NCPH members Kathy Corbett and Dick Miller, raising some challenging questions about the draft definition of public history that the NCPH board of directors unveiled in Santa Fe, and 2) an MP3 recording of one of the keynote addresses from the Swansea conference – Michael Houlihan, Director General of Amgueddfa Cymru/National Museum Wales, speaking on “Museums as Mausoleums: Is Memory Killing the Muse?” These two segments are posted as separate messages, with the subject lines "What is Public History?" and "Museums as Mausoleums." Although they weren’t specifically intended to be presented together, we think they work well to open up the same set of questions about who participates in "public history" and on what terms. We invite you to read the posting and/or listen to the talk (or read the brief summary included with the link), and then send your thoughts, questions, or responses to the list at: h-public@h-net.msu.edu You might think of this as the "audience discussion" segment of an international mini-conference session. It’s a great opportunity for us to share ideas across distances without anyone having to buy a plane ticket – the kind of flexible forum that cyberspace is uniquely able to provide. Looking forward to your participation in this discussion, Cathy Stanton Editor, H-Public
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