Statements
Mission
AASLH provides leadership and support for its members who preserve and interpret state and local history in order to make the past more meaningful to all people.
Background
The origins of AASLH can be traced back to the extraordinary flowering of state and local history that occurred in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1904, the American Historical Association, itself a fledgling professional body, established the semi-autonomous Conference of State and Local Historical Societies to serve the leaders of those agencies. In 1939, a group of Conference members, chaired by the director of the North Carolina Department of Archives and History, discussed and then proposed the creation of an independent entity. Its job would be to better coordinate at the national level the activities of historical societies and stimulate the writing and teaching of state and local history in North America. On December 27, 1940, the Conference of State and Local History met and disbanded itself. Then the American Association for State and Local History was born. AASLH's national headquarters is located in Nashville because its first full-time director was at time the archivist of the state of Tennessee. Dr. William T. Alderson took the position, but only under the conditions that AASLH's headquarters could remain in Nashville.
Impact
AASLH is the only national historical association headquartered in Nashville, TN. The association provides over 5,750 institutional and individual members with professional development and national leadership to help them do their important work at the local level. Three current programs that will have a lasting impact on the field include: (1) 250th Task Force is leading the field in planning for the semiquincentennial of the US in 2026 including charting activities by state and developing broad themes to make the commemoration inclusive; (2) Increase online Learning Opportunities through webinars and the online clearinghouse through the AASLH website; and (3) Standards and Excellence Program for History Organizations (StEPs) sets national benchmarks for areas of improvement in interpretation, collections management, educational programming, and management. In February 2019, the StEPs program received its 1,000th subscribing organization, President Lincoln's Cottage in Washington, D.C. An accomplishment of note in 2018 was that AASLH piloted a new program, funded by a $12,000 grant from Humanities Tennessee, called Master Local Historians, which is an initiative to serve members of the general public interested in learning the methods, skills, and resources that historians and history organizations use. Tested at history institutions in East, Middle, and West Tennessee, the program is now called Community Historians and staff submitted it for a possible grant from the federal government's Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Another accomplishment for 2018 was putting the Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging, a standard for classifying and naming objects in cultural collections, online. For over 40 years, the print version has been used by museums and heritage organizations. AASLH's Nomenclature Task Force, the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) and Parks Canada worked together to create a new, FREE, bilingual, illustrated online version. A third accomplishment of note was launching a cohort project for seven African American museums to participate in the StEPs project, in partnership with the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture. A main goal for the coming year is completion of a an IMLS grant-funded project to overhaul the framework we use for all the continuing education/professional development webinars, online courses, and workshops that we provided for public historians and other public history practitioners around the country. A second major goal, connected to the Community Historians program serving the public and the CE/PD framework serving professionals, is improving AASLH's History Leadership Institute (HLI), a capstone CE/PD opportunity that currently is an intensive, three-week residential seminar. HLI has existed in one form or another for more than 50 years and is being reinvigorated. A third major goal for the year is wrapping up the Enhancement initiative for the StEPs program described above. AASLH has recruited volunteers from across the spectrum of history museums and history organizations to help with the StEPs Enhancement project. New content is being created around topics such as digital collections, diversity, and sustainability. (https://aaslh.org/1000-steps-enrollment/). Our most ambitious goal for the coming year is related to preparing for the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026. AASLH is working with the national Semiquincentennial Commission and many other partners and is serving as a central clearinghouse of information while also developing goals and themes for the nation's historical community to use in planning for 250th activities. Taking all the preparations from the past year and advancing them in an inclusive way will be our challenge for the next few years.
Needs
1. Funding for scholarships for workshop attendees, especially from among the members of the Tennessee Association of Museums (TAM). 2. Scholarships for small institutional members (especially TAM) so they can participate in AASLH Professional Development or StEPs program. We have formed StEPs cohorts/groups, for example, in Connecticut, Utah, in the St. Louis region, and with the National Museum of African American History & Culture. This is a strong model that could be replicated in several places in Tennessee.3. Half-time staff position to organize advocacy efforts across Tennessee for history and history organizations, which would serve as a model for similar efforts in other states. 4. Funding for staff travel for professional development training workshops 5. Additional staff member to enable a greater participation in the history and humanities community across Tennessee.
CEO Statement
We are a quickly developing history organization with a energetic staff and large volunteer base of committee members across the country. AASLH is making a difference to small history organizations all over the U.S. while leading the advancement of the public history and history museum community with the help of many of the largest history institutions out there. We are cutting edge and down-home. Also, AASLH is a unique organization for Nashville. The association not only provides programs and services to history organizations in Tennessee, but nationally and, at times, internationally. AASLH has come under pressure many times to move its headquarters to Washington, DC, the place most national associations live. However, AASLH's staff and board believe Nashville is the perfect home for AASLH; a place outside of Beltway politics and closer to the ground where the work of state and local history is done in museums, historical societies, archives, and other organizations.
Board Chair Statement
AASLH has had its national headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, since it hired its first full-time director in 1964 -- Dr. William Alderson, Archivist for the State of Tennessee. AASLH's roots are in Tennessee, and the history organizations in Tennessee have benefited greatly from this terrific resource. AASLH has been vital to advancing the expertise of professional and volunteer history practitioners at a wide variety of institutions and organizations in Tennessee and the United States as a whole.
Service Categories |
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| Primary Category: | Mutual & Membership Benefit - Professional Societies & Associations |
| Secondary Category: | Arts, Culture & Humanities - Historical Organizations |
| Tertiary Category: | Arts, Culture & Humanities - History Museums |
Areas Served
AASLH serves a national audience of people who work or volunteer in the history field, as well as a select number of international members.
| International |
| National |
