What if you could take your vacation time to not only see a new place, but meet new friends and use your hands to preserve built heritage all at the same time?

That’s just the kind of unforgettable experience Jamie Donahoe facilitates around the world. She co-founded Adventures in Preservation with the mission to save the world’s architectural heritage by supporting community-driven preservation projects that seek to create economic and environmental sustainability.

Jamie has a very down-to-earth personality that comes through in her communication online as well. In this interview, she talks about how she uses the web to tell the stories of heritage resources. But, just as importantly, she’ll explore how the Adventures in Preservation concept came about, and hopefully give you some insight into developing and marketing your own heritage brand.

Guin: Your site is called Adventures in Preservation, and was actually just rebranded. Tell me how it got started, and where you are today. [Time stamp #00:02:30.6#]

Donahoe: We used to be called Heritage Conservation Network and we started back in 2001 with an idea that a friend of mine–Judith Broeker–had. It was a typical Catch-22: People wanted to learn how to preserve buildings, but there was very little opportunity to get practical and experience. What was available was very expensive. So she had this idea of finding buildings that needed help. We did that for a while, and it eventually faded away. Then, in 2001, I was in the process of moving from Bangkok to Switzerland, and she said she would like to give the idea another try. So, I said let’s do it as a non-profit as a way to get grants and work with different types of structures. We launched Heritage Conservation Network, and we have projects in Italy, Mexico, and throughout the U.S. Word started to spread, and we found ourselves with more places in need of help than we had people to work on them. So we decided we needed more volunteers. We changed the focus more toward the volunteer vacation than the preservation training. You don’t need experience to go on the trips, although we love to have people along that will share their experience. That’s where we started. Then we did some research and decided to change the name to Adventures in Preservation, which seemed to be a little more dynamic and fun. For some reason, people couldn’t remember Heritage Conservation Network, just as they can’t remember names like The National Register of Historic Places–it’s always the National Historic Register, or something like that. We’ve had workshops in eight countries at this point. #00:04:57.4#

Guin: It really is a greater experience than just the classroom. Is that what inspired you to enter this “realm of endeavor?” #00:05:09.0#

D: In terms of the hands-on stuff, yes. Similar to the environmental movement, we really believe that the heart of preservation is education. By making preservation more accessible to people we help them realize that much of what they see around them has historic value and help them gain an appreciation of that. Just like teaching children you recycle for a reason, you try to convey why a building should be preserved by pointing out its special architectural value, history, setting, etc. I think that’s why our trips do well. We do a pretty good job converting people who aren’t yet die-hard preservationists. #00:06:02.9#

G: What do you see being the most common story about why people want to get involved? #00:06:09.8#

D: First, there are people who are contemplating a career in historic preservation, but aren’t yet sure it’s for them. We have a high success rate with that. We’ve had people pounding rocks for a week in the hot sun and they finishing saying “this is what I want to do for the rest of my life!” We also get a lot of “desk preservationists” who have never had the opportunity to do any of the hands-on stuff. For example, preservation planners may talk to planners or see their plans get implemented, but never have the opportunity to get their hands dirty. They then return to their jobs renewed and connected to what they’re working for. #00:07:06.8#

G: What do you see for the future of Adventures in Preservation? #00:07:20.8#

D: We’d like to continue to grow. We get many more requests for assistance than we can possibly account for. A sustainable level for us right now is 4-5 workshops a year. We’d like to expand that to 15-20 fully-staffed programs around the world each year. #00:07:51.9#

G: You alluded to the evolution of the brand. Adventures in Preservation is a name that sticks. Probably there are many heritage preservation organizations who are contemplating reworking their image for the digital age. Tell me about the process you went through, and what advice would you have for others? #00:08:19.9#

D: We made a decision early on, due to environmental concerns and the global nature of our work, to be a virtual organization. There are just two of us, so the nature of internet communication lets us accomplish quite a lot. There are so many ways to communicate now–Twitter, Facebook, etc. But before those, we had a strong presence using website and e-mail strategies. We’re very lucky that the person who set up our website was very together and designed our presence to be organized, easy to navigate and polished. In redesigning the website, we began to incorporate social media like embedded video and images to make the experience more dynamic. Interestingly, we have hits from 72 different countries, and when we look at our stats, we have a number of people who choose to receive our e-mail in text only, and have very slow connections. We have to consider the needs of our audience because we have projects in Africa, South America, and other countries. So everyone should keep in mind that not everyone is running broadband and wireless. #00:10:37.8#

G: How did you come up with the new name? #00:10:42.6#

D: In Boulder, Colo., you get a lot of creative and outdoorsy people. So Judith convened a panel–some had marketing expertise, others had adventure travel expertise–who generously donated their time. They brainstormed coming up with a name from both the heritage and travel angles. The name Adventures in Preservation came out of that with the tagline “restore a building, renew a community.” That is essentially what our projects do. #00:11:28.5#

G: You’re using your website to great effect, and your social media presence as well. I’ve never been on one of your trips, but I’m certainly a fan and follower. Tell me how you picked the communications tools that you did and how you use them in such a targeted, conversational way. #00:12:13.6#

D: Unlike many preservation organizations that work locally or regionally, we work all over the world. We honestly sat on the idea of getting into Twitter and Facebook because we couldn’t imagine fitting it in. It got to the point that we realized that we had to be on there if we wanted to start attracting students and younger people to the programs. Then, information started coming out about the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women 55 and older. We knew we got a lot of those people on our trips, so we knew we had to be there. We didn’t want to miss the boat. I’m a total information junkie and love computers, so I love finding so many interesting things on Twitter. We had people become fans because I talk about so many topics. I don’t know yet it that has translated into people coming to our workshops yet. I’m still having fun. What’s been useful about social media already is getting feedback from people who might tell us they can’t go on our trips because they are too expensive. Because we have a dialog already going, we can let them know we sometimes have scholarships or financial assistance, and offer other tips for reducing their costs. We can also communicate that more broadly to other people who might be thinking the same thing. #00:14:23.7#

G: Have you run across anyone who went on your trips and really discovered a new passion, and went on to become involved with preservation as a mission in their own lives? #00:14:33.2#

D: A lot of our guests already have a preservation bent anyway. There is a woman who has been on four trips with us. She is a self-described conservation junkie. There are more people who went on a specific project and became preservation advocates of just that project. For example, in Waynesville, N.C., at the Francis Gristmill, there’s a man there who turns out to be my father’s long-lost cousin. He lived part time in Waynesville and saw an article in the newspaper. As retired engineer, he was intrigued. So he joined that workshop and has since become one of the key volunteers of the Francis Mill Preservation Society. He is now one of only three people who know how to run the mill, so that resource certainly benefited longterm from his participation in that project. #00:15:47.2#

G: What sparks people to make the leap to sign up for one of your projects? #00:15:58.8#

D. That is the $100,000 question. Ordinarily, they see something on the website. It interests them personally, but not quite sure so they call for more information. We do have a lot of people who hear about a project, instantly fall in love with it, and sign up. To show you how far the web has come since we started, there is a group called the Analysis Exchange, and they match mentors. They are helping us with the web analytics, which is more deeply scientific than I ever knew. That is helping us understand how people are interacting with our website and informing what we do to communicate through it. #00:17:03.4#

G: What analytics platform are you using? #00:17:09.9#

D: We’re using Google Analytics, and learning so much. I always just looked at the reports to note if our hits had gone up, but have now learned an incredible amount. I would recommend that any non-profit organization that’s looking to use its website to help further its mission to contact them. #00:17:42.2#

G: How important is an international perspective for a preservation organization? #00:17:46.8#

D: I think an international perspective is important for everything. I’m personally very grateful to have worked overseas for so many years, and for my daughter work grow up overseas as well. I think the more information you can get for any problem you are facing, the better. A lot of the problems buildings in the United States are now having, people in Europe dealt with 200 years ago. We have to share that knowledge. There’s a lot of historic reinforced concrete (yes there is such a thing) here that’s falling apart due to humidity, and they bring in experts to deal with those problems. Steven Booker is an Australian conservation architect who went to our workshop in Slovenia two years ago and just fell in love with the country. He agreed to come back this year and lead the work. His perspective is that our purpose is to share our stories and experiences and hopefully they decide that approach is for them. But we’re not telling anyone how they have to do anything for it to be right. It’s about doing what’s right for the buildings, but also helping people make informed decisions. #00:19:22.3#

G: How can people connect with you, and are there any new areas of the web you are starting to explore? #00:19:33.6#

D: We have started blogging, and the site is called “Preservation Journey.” We’re currently merging the blog into our main site. Blogging is fun because it can be about anything–Twitter on a larger scale. We’d also like to be able to do commerce online more easily. This is a bigger issue when you are working internationally. For example: we have people who are Slovenian and they want to go to a workshop in Albania, but PayPal may not take their currency. As the world becomes even smaller and web software makes these kind of transactions easier, these problems will continue to become fewer. #00:20:48.4#

G: Do you ever get to do some of the hands-on work, or are you stuck in the virtual space? #00:20:48.4#

D: I get to do a little of both. I had a good time broiling in the sun at the Bartow-Pell Mansion. My best experience was at the Francis Mill, though. Partly because of finding my father’s cousin. The people were great. When I was there in 2004, the building was in a state of near collapse. The east side was completely water damaged. We had two weeks there, and the last hour, we had a boom crane lift this 26-ft. hemlock sill beam and we slid it into place. It was the greatest experience of my life, other than having my daughter. We were all saying “Oh my God, we did it! We saved this building!” There’s not too many opportunities you can say you really did that. #00:22:06.6#

G: Very good! Is there anything else you’d like to add? #00:22:07.8#

D: We certainly invite you to come along on one of our workshops. We’ve got some great ones planned for the future!

More links:

Adventures in Preservation Flickr Stream

Facebook Page

Twitter Stream

Some of you may not realize that the National Park Service (NPS) has “museums” or museum collections.  Many of you may not know what a Curator, an Archivist, an Archeologist or a Conservator actually does behind the scenes for any museum that you’ve been to. And most of you have probably never heard of the Northeast Museum Services Center – referred to by our initials (NMSC).  But, you undoubtedly know the power of social media to connect you and other readers with this type of information.

The NMSC is an NPS program that helps parks – primarily in the Northeast – with preserving, protecting and making accessible museum and archival collections. Our team of Curators, Archivists and Conservators are available for cataloging (both archeology and archives); museum research and planning; collections conservation and general technical assistance.  Think of us as museum consultants for the parks – we help parks to assess their collections management issues; to find funding to correct those problems and then to assist them with correcting those problems.

We were fairly late to the game, but we now realize the value of social media to any organization and have started additional public outreach through Twitter, Facebook and a blog of our own.

Is Tweeting Really for Us?

For at least a year or more, that was the question bouncing around our office about Twitter and other forms of social media.  Our office is a generational mix from 20 something volunteers, interns and technician that all want to be on the cutting edge of innovation to 40+ year old staff that are unsure of the value added by websites that our kids are using in their free time.  We are also like most entities nowadays, being asked to do more with less. Two of our full-time staff members left for other jobs in less than a year and we were unable to re-fill those positions.  In that time, the workload only increased.  With that in mind, should we be “wasting” valuable staff time on something “frivolous” like Facebook or Twitter?

I’ll admit that I’m one of the 40-somethings and I was on the fence about the value that we might get from putting any staff time towards social media.  But, I/we realized several things based on general observations, calls with our parks and an assessment of social media usage –

1. Most people are unaware that NPS sites even have “museums” and/or museum collections. We hear the same thing that you may be thinking, “But, the NPS is Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. It does not have museums like Smithsonian.” You are correct that the NPS has very few traditional four-wall museums like the Smithsonian.  But, what we do have (and that we help to manage) are 26 million artifacts and archival documents in the Northeast alone in the real places that they were used or made.  That includes the landscape drawings of the Olmsteds at Frederick Law Olmsted NHS, the library of John Quincy Adams at Adams NHP, archeological collections from Jamestown at Colonial NHP, Civil War archival collections at Gettysburg NMP, and natural history specimens collected from Shenandoah NP.
2. Since the NMSC is a behind-the-scenes group that even lacks a public domain name, most people (NPS staff included) are not aware of the services that we provide.  In many cases, the general public may have heard the title Curator, Archivist, Archeologist or Conservator, but may not really know what we do.  We all know the objects that we see on exhibit or the documents that we use for research, but collections care is also a critical component of the NPS mission that needs to be fostered.  Not to mention the fact that all cultural institutions need to help build and diversify the museum studies workforce.
3. Social media has already become the information clearinghouse for the museum field. While we were blindly thinking that Twitter was just celebrity gossip or blogs are a dying form of communication, all forms of social media had become the accepted way of disseminating information for organizations such as Association of American Museums (AAM), Smithsonian Institution and most of our parks.  We had isolated ourselves and we were missing critical information.

So, in late 2010 with the relaxing of some NPS social media restrictions, we decided to join the rest of the world and test out a social media initiative for our office.

Now, Go Engage Your “Audience”

Okay, so, we knew what we wanted to say about the museum collections in the National Park Service and about our work. Our goals were/are fairly simple: highlight the museum collections in the Northeast Region of the NPS; encourage the public (as well as NPS followers) to adopt an overall stewardship ethic; and connect (or re-connect) ourselves with non-NPS museum professionals in order to stay abreast of the latest curatorial trends.

BUT – Who is our audience? How do we attract them to us? What are the best forms of social media to do that? And, what format should the content take?  Many books have been written about the use of social media by museums; workshops are available and the web is full of great websites that provide guidance.  None of those are focused on a behind-the-scenes program like ours that works with collections from many disparate sites and focuses on region-wide collection management issues.  We decided to turn to one of our 20-something Museum Specialists (Megan Lentz) as our de facto Social Media Consultant to develop a short-term and long-term social media strategy.

Megan reviewed existing uses of social media by museums and brought her own usage to the discussion.  We then decided to start our slow roll-out with two Twitter feeds (@NPS_NMSC and @NMSC_Volunteers ), a Facebook Page and a blog focused on our Archeological Collections Management team.  Generally speaking, we’ve engaged our varied audience in a number of different ways:

• Setting up searches on the federal government’s official jobs site for Curator, Archives, Archeology and Conservator job announcements that need wider distribution;
• Creating Google searches focused on issues such as “museum storage,” museum security and fire prevention that affect all of our sites;
• Developing a calendar of key dates for our parks – such as birthdates for historical figures – as times to highlight images and facts about NPS museum collections associated with those sites;
• Connecting with our parks and other cultural institutions through Twitter and Facebook to find collection management information that we feel should be shared and discussed;
• Generating threads that focus on key collection management issue including the use of museum collections in social media campaigns;
• Initiating a feed focused on the work of our volunteers and interns program (@NMSC_Volunteers) to help build the workforce and reinforce the types of museum opportunities that are available;
• Blogging about the work of our Archeological Collections Management team.  Most people know the Indiana Jones and the excavating side of archeology, but are unaware of the curation involved after the dig.  Postings have included research and photos on bottles that may have been used by George Washington, the history of matches, and a spotlight on pipe stems.
• Utilizing a third-party social media dashboard (Hootsuite) to plan and space out postings to all of our accounts.

Where Do We Go From Here?

In less than 6 months, we feel like we’ve made significant progress towards our goals with NPS and non-NPS followers from across the nation.  In many ways, the numbers speak for themselves. We primarily provide service to 76 sites in the Northeast, but @NPS_NMSC (190+ followers), @NMSC_Volunteers (80+ followers), NMSC on Facebook (70+ followers), and our blog (300+ readers per posting) are reaching a much broader audience.  Hootsuite also provides analytics and many of our postings get 10 to 30 additional clicks for more information. Are those numbers that you’d be interested in?

Additionally, the current NPS Director Jon Jarvis was appointed in 2009 with a set of priorities that focused on Workforce, Relevancy, Education and Stewardship.  Our early successes with social media are also helping us and thus the NPS as whole to make progress in each of these areas as well.  We’ve been able to re-connect with the museum workforce outside of our region and outside of the NPS; help parks with relevancy by focusing on the latest trends in the use of museum collections; discover some of the latest technologies such as the use of Google Maps and also QR codes that might improve access to museum collections for educational purposes; and find information on fire prevention and security needs for museum collections.  And, we feel like we’ve only just started to scratch the surface.

Based on these early successes, we will continue to support and improve upon our current social media outlets.  We plan on getting more of our staff involved and thus highlighting more of our work as well as the collections in the Northeast.  We are also considering other social media options including a blog for our entire office.  Megan continues as our de facto Social Media Consultant and monitors the latest trends in social media usage.  We are also advocating for other NPS parks and regional programs to use social media in a similiar way (with an emphasis even less on “us” and more on the actual resources).  These statistics and early successes may also help us to advocate for a public domain name to reinforce the NPS stewardship role to the general public.

Conclusion

If you or your organization does not have a social media strategy at this point, consider the tremendous benefits and get started.  If you don’t have a 20-something on staff to work with as your Social Media Consultant, consider bringing someone on board or contracting with someone to develop and implement that strategy.  If you are interested in connecting with more museum or NPS information, consider following some of our parks and other cultural institutions through social media.  And, if you want to know more about NPS museum collections, what a Curator does, or what the NMSC does, consider following us on Twitter, Facebook or through our blog.

For a very small time commitment, you will find that social-izing is worthwhile.

Here is Charleen Mullenweg’s second post on her experience at the Rootstech Genealogy Conference. Read about her previous experiences here.

After lunch Thursday, I headed for the expo floor.  We had to get a certain number of signatures from different booths in order to get the Rootstech t-shirts, so I headed down there to grab some of them before my next session.  This is where I ran into one of the few technical snafu’s of the conference: there was no time allotted between sessions for travel or visiting the expo floor.  I had left lunch a few minutes early, but still got hung up at the FamilySearch booth, and at the booth for this wicked cool scanner called a Flip Pal (I’m seriously thinking about getting one since my last scanner just went belly up). The upshot of this is that I was very late to my next session, “Toy Story: Electronic Tools for Genealogists” presented by Sandra Crowley.  Fortunately, the Rootstech swag bag offered up a full syllabus of each of the sessions, so I can still give you the skinny of the bits that I missed.

Sandra Crowley’s began by pointing out that while the information that we look for is essentially the same stuff our parents and grandparents looked for, the technologies and the methodologies are quite different.  Sandra began with talking about laptops, or, if the user is looking for something more lightweight and portable, netbooks.  She spoke about the various specs that each user must examine before choosing  a model based on how the user believes they will be using the portable computer.  The same applied for storage devices, which are becoming smaller and cheaper by the hour (it seems), and for tablet computers.  She covered the three types of scanners that are available to genealogists – desktop, portable, and hand held – and the technical specs to consider when you want to buy one (big hint from me to you: a minimum 300 dpi is needed if you ever want to blow up the photograph later).  Digital cameras, GPS devices, and smarthphones are all part of her toolbox.  Sandra finished her talk after discussing the importance of connectivity, and the various options that users have if they’re denied an easy wi-fi connection.  Warning, many of those aftermarket options come with lengthy contracts.  I enjoyed this session immensely, and found her advice to be helpful, especially for non-technical users.  She left her users with a helpful suggestion: visit the FamilySearch Wiki technology section for more helpful hints about the technologies that you can use!

Then I went to “Mobile Apps for Genealogy” by A. C. Ivory, of Find My Ancestor blog fame.  A. C. recommended several apps in several categories, beginning with your basic genealogical tools for iPhone and iPad; he was particularly fond of Reunion (which only works with Macintosh computers), and included Ancestry, MacFamily Tree (also for the Macintosh), Gedview (only woorks with GEDCOM, no multimedia), Mobile Tree (only for LDS currently), and Traces of the Past (from FamilySearch.org). He covered educational apps, like the Genealogy Gems Podcast App (which I signed up for immediately, and have enjoyed), and an interesting sounding one called On This Day (which I haven’t signed up for yet, but I’ll let you know if I do).  He then moved on to organization and storage apps, suggesting Research Logger, an app that manages to-do lists, the logging of research, and multimedia files, Dropbox, which works cross-platform, and has various apps associated with it, and Evernote, which allows you to access your docs and photos from anywhere.  Finally, he talked about social networking apps like Twitter and Facebook that allow you to share your genealogy discoveries with others.

When I went to go to my last session of the day, “Enhanced Genealogy through Research, Documents, Organization and Sharing,” I ran into the second technological snafu of the conference.  I found nothing wrong with Brandy Sacco’s excellent presentation, but we were not provided with a syllabus of the presentations before registration, and I was unaware that I was walking into a sales pitch for her product, Familyology.  I ended up slipping out and going back to the expo hall to pick up some more signatures and check out some more products.

That evening, my mother and I went to the Night at the Planetarium event, hosted by brightsolid.  We found this event to be a little disappointing – the venue was fantastic, and the movie offerings were a lot of fun.  The event was billed as a dinner, but the food offerings were poor, and there were precious few places to sit while eating.  The iced water and pink lemonade ran out by 7:30 on the second floor.  My mother and I enjoyed the 3D movie about the Hubble telescope, and my mother even  managed to snap a picture of me walking on the moon.

Thus endeth my first day of Rootstech – though it had enough packed into it that it took me until today to finish blogging it!  I hope to take lass time on it in the future posts.

Related articles

• RootsTech Online
• RootsTech2014 – Presentation on Creating a Digital Genealogy Scrapbook
• RootsTech Conference Announces Free Online Broadcast Schedule
• Conference combines genealogy, technology to help people discover their roots

I’m always honored when someone says they enjoy the work at Voices of the Past. So, in appreciation of the readers and listeners of this site, I’m offering a free (as in less than 300 left) limited edition Voices of the Past pen. All you have to do is make a thoughtful comment on some post on this site that you found useful. Once you’ve commented, I will contact you by e-mail to get your shipping information. I pay postage too. It’s that simple!

If you’d like to keep up with us a bit better, sign up for the Voices of the Past e-newsletter by registering on our front page and “like” us on Facebook. Thanks again for your loyalty and friendship. I look forward to bringing you more of the best in heritage online in 2011.

For the average person, archaeology and legal issues may not seem to have an obvious connection. Tales of archaeological discovery evoke feelings of adventure and connection to our fellow humans past and present. Not so much for the legal system. Yet there are potentially a mountain of legal issues that could put a stop to any excavation. Kimberly Alderman tackles these topics in her blog Cultural Property & Archaeology in an approachable yet substantive way.

[Note: This blog is currently inactive, though Kimberly still works in this field]

Where did your interest in archaeology and law originate?

My undergraduate degree is in Art History and Archaeology.  After university, I was doing contract archaeology work when I had the bright idea to go to law school to study “archaeology law.”  I had no idea at the time what that meant, and as it turns out there’s really no such program. But I was able to fashion myself an education in the subject by taking seminars in which I could choose archaeology law-esque paper topics.

What’s the mission of your blog?

I started blogging to better position and educate myself as a scholar in cultural property law.  They say there’s no better way to learn about something than by writing about it.  Also, I’ve met a lot of people with similar interests through the blog.  I feel like I am now part of a community of people who are dedicated to the scholarship of cultural property law, even though they aren’t all “scholars” in the traditional sense of the word.  The mission now is simply to maintain a high-quality blog dedicated to this very specific subject area.  There are others focused on similar subject areas, but mine is topically unique, as are theirs.

How did you decide blogging was the right tool for you?

Two years ago, I was living in remote Alaska, feeling fairly disconnected from the scholarly and legal communities.  The day I got satellite internet set up, I signed up for a WordPress blog and started “reporting.” I scoured the news for interesting articles, and typed up little summaries as best as I could figure out how.  I subscribed to a bunch of blogs that were topically related, and I started to get to know the other people who were blogging.  Voila!  The Cultural Property & Archaeology Law Blog was born.

Why is it important that legal issues are addressed in the conversation regarding archeology and cultural heritage?

It’s one thing to have a fascination with ancient objects, but without an understanding of the meaning of those objects, they’re just pretty trinkets.  It is equally important to have an understanding of the modern significance of those objects, whether as political tools, legitimizers or something else.  The study of cultural property and archaeology law is a quest for sustainability.  The physical manifestation of our past is finite, and if illegal excavation or exportation goes unchecked, then those artifacts and sites will be destroyed without having extracted the full possible social value from them.  Put simply, there could be no heritage community without legal protection for that heritage.

Your blog made a list of “50 Best Blogs for Archaeology Students.” How did you feel about that?

The only comment I would have on this distinction is that I think its good to educate archaeology students on the more pragmatic aspects of the discipline.  Traditionally, the study of archaeology has focused more on historical meaning than present meaning, even though both are important.  In art history, I learned that a painting created in 1750 about biblical times can tell you far more about life and society in 1750 than it can tell you about Judas or John in whatever biblical setting is pictured.  Similarly, how our modern society and legal system approaches the protection of ancient objects, and which objects are given preferential value over others, is sometimes more revealing than studying the objects alone.

Describe the big legal issues that arise in archeology/cultural property.

One of the biggest points of discussion at present is the international dispute over repatriation of objects seized in the past (quite often, in colonial times).  Less “hot topic” legal issues include looting, theft, the illicit trade and protecting sites of historical value in the face of development.  There is also significant discussion over where the burden should lie when dealing with unprovenanced antiquities — should museums and private collectors require that objects have paperwork proving they were legally excavated and exported, or should the burden be placed on source countries to stop these objects from leaving the country or post notices on the international databases of missing objects?  A topic that I’ve been getting increasingly interested in as of late is intangible cultural property.  Sometimes people (particularly indigenous groups) can inherit a “cultural property interest” in something that is intangible — an old song melody, a dance, even a sunrise.  This is taking us out of the property model altogether and that’s fascinating.  In terms of my role, I’m just an observer.  I report my observations via the blog, but whether the world cares or not, well, that’s up to them.

Where do you draw inspiration for your content?

I read a lot of other blogs, my favorites on similar areas being those by Tom Flynn, Derek Fincham, and Paul Barford, each for very different reasons (Tom’s insightful and witty, Derek is always right, and Paul is mind-bogglingly prolific.)

I also have Google News set up to give me an RSS feed on critical keywords (“cultural property,” “UNESCO,” things of that nature).  I sort through a lot of junk via those feeds to get to the interesting and relevant stuff, and that’s what makes the blog valuable.  I don’t purport to present *everything* of value on my subject area, but I try to make sure everything I post has value.

How has social media helped you share your interests?

I have no doubt that without blogging I never would have connected in the way that I have with other people who are interested in my subject area.   By utilizing social media, I’ve been able to create a virtual network of friends and colleagues who have helped me tremendously in terms of staying involved and progressing in my scholarly pursuits in this fairly narrow subject area.

What is your advice to someone interested in learning more about heritage-related legal issues?

In terms of starting a blog, that is very easy: write.  Getting involved with heritage related issues is another thing, and depending on your area of expertise there are a lot of organizations which would serve as great starting places.  A couple that come to mind include the AIA (Archaeology Institute of America), ARCA (Association for Research into Crimes Against Art), LCCHP (Lawyers Committee for Cultural Heritage and Preservation), and SAFE (Saving Antiquities for Everyone).  There are also groups on the other side of the fence in terms of political views, including the ACCG (Ancient Coin Collectors Guild).  You have to figure out what your personal goal is (preservation at all costs? context over commerce? repatriation of objects to source nations? protection of traditional notions of property rights?).  Whatever your philosophical disposition when it comes to ancient objects and sites, there’s an organization to suit your needs.

What is planned in the future for your blog?

I intend to keep doing what I’m doing to the best of my ability.  Recently, I’ve started to focus more on multimedia sources of information (promoting audio and video on other sites), as that seems to be the thing.  I’m also always open to readers making suggestions as to what they’d like to see more or less of, whether in regard to content or delivery.  That’s one of the great things about blogs; they are dynamic.  They are easy to change when you yourself change, as you grow as an individual or as a scholar.

What is your blog’s ultimate goal?

My blog’s ultimate goal is to promote the scholarship of cultural property law in a fairly impartial way.  Not impartial in a way that I’d hesitate to say if I think a particular argument espoused in a book, article, or on another blog is rubbish, but legally impartial.  In my opinion, there is so much morality loaded into cultural property and archaeology law perspectives at present that a lot of the reporting is spoiled by preconceived bias.  The Cultural Property and Archaeology Law Blog strives to provides a middle ground, where the strengths and weaknesses of all sides’ positions can be considered with the impartiality of a legal observer.

“Justice” teaser graphic by mindgutter on Flickr