the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums
The ALHFAM Annual Meeting and Conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana starts Sunday. I can't wait! ALHFAM annual conferences offer many opportunities to learn about living history and historic agriculture, keep abreast of trends in the field, forge professional connections, and reconnect with friends. On top of all the good stuff an annual conference offers, we… Continue reading How to Eat Crawfish
I recently read an article on the benefits of collections-based research. The author stated the following: "A canned program* performs a social function. It brings together members and visitors for an enjoyable experience, adds to attendance figures, and may promote repeat visitation. It is often educational, and at its best truly thought provoking. But its… Continue reading Canned Programming for Museums: Healthy?
I just finished reading An Anarchist's Guide to Historic House Museums. This is not a review. Whether or not you agree with many of the ideas espoused, it is thought-provoking. I do unabashedly love the idea of the Anarchist tags. They are brilliant and should be carried around by anyone who cares about and visits… Continue reading An Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums
An interesting feature on the improved ALHFAM website are the forums. Forums are set up for all of the Professional Interest Groups (PIGs), for the membership at large, and for the MidAtlantic region (regional forums need to be initiated by your regional rep--if your region doesn't have one yet, contact your rep and tell them… Continue reading The Forums are Open
Recent discussion on ALHFAM-L (ALHFAM's email discussion list) about living history bibliographies led to one of our members from the Netherlands sharing this: Interpretation: The International Bibliographic Database of Living History. Even though the database is supported by ALHFAM and NAI (National Association for Interpretation) and affiliated with IMTAL (International Museum Theatre Alliance), it was… Continue reading Interpretation: The International Bibliographic Database of Living History
Good question. Logic would dictate that it is a heritage breed being carefully preserved at one of the ALHFAM member historic sites. Not the case. In ALHFAM, PIG = Professional Interest Group. There are many and they do important work. ALHFAM Professional Interest Groups give members the opportunity to explore and share information on specific… Continue reading What is an ALHFAM PIG?
Poultry flock inspection, blade sheep shearing, English formal gardens in America, heritage potatoes, preservation of period clothing, spinning and weaving, behaviorism applications for tourists . . . What a wonderfully eclectic mix of topics; articles about which are found in just two issues of the Bulletin, ALHFAM's quarterly journal. Every issue I receive has something… Continue reading Poultry to Period Clothing: The Bulletin
ALHFAM will be unveiling a new and greatly improved website soon. One of the advantages of the new site includes a Membership Management System (MMS). Our Communications team has been hard at work on this project and wants to make every member comfortable with the new site and system. To this end they've created very… Continue reading New Website Coming
The ALHFAM Historic Agriculture Resources Map is now live on the ALHFAM website. The map features information about ALHFAM members that have and/or use historic agricultural collections and techniques. This tool was created to help us share our historic agricultural assets with each other and the general public. The map is keyword searchable so if… Continue reading ALHFAM Historic Agriculture Resources Map
Recently, on the ALHFAM Facebook page and the discussion list (ALHFAM-L), members were asked, "Why ALHFAM?" Why do you join? Why do you renew? Why should others join? The answers so far are not surprising to me: the knowledge base of the members, the willingness to share that knowledge, and the overall congeniality of our… Continue reading Why ALHFAM?
ALHFAM 