Author: Jon Wanzer

Slavery in America: A sampling

By: Jonathan Wanzer ORCiD 0009-0004-9275-7410
Submitted on: April 5, 2025
Submitted to: Dr. Schultz – Liberty University
Course: HIST 701 Historical Professions
Chicago Citation:
Wanzer, Jonathan. “Slavery in America: A Sampling.” Historical Interpretations. Jonathan Wanzer, April 5, 2025. http://wanzer.org/2025/04/slavery-in-america-a-sampling/.

Preface

The topic of slavery in America is a topic charged with emotions, regardless of the perspective from which you view it. As an older guy, a descendant of Northern and Western European ancestry, I find this a complex topic to approach. However, it is a topic I have been paying more attention to in recent years. In a class on the Civil War a book by Charles B. Dew came to my attention, Apostles of Disunion.1 Dew’s book fanned the flames of inquiry urging me to look below the surface when researching subjects that have racial or ethnic discriminatory elements, be it aboriginal peoples, the enslaved, or any other opposing people groups. This post, aside from being a class assignment,2 addresses an important topic that should be better understood by every American, slavery in the American context. This post is only one narrow look at a complex topic.

Methodist Episcopal Church,
New Hampshire Conference 1844-45

The Minutes of the New Hampshire Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the year of 1844-45 provides a lot of information about the church at this time in a short 22 pages. It addresses topics from membership to finances, appointments, and obituaries. It also contains two position papers with resolutions on topics that would become very important to the country in the coming decades. The minutes contain position papers on Temperance and Slavery.

Division over the topic of slavery has been a part of political discourse in America since the debate over independence in the Second Continental Congress. Despite participation in the slave trade and many of the founding fathers owning slaves themselves, the north-south division on the subject has manifested in many ways ever since. One has been through the publishing of position papers, often by civic groups including those specifically focused on abolition, and in position papers and resolutions published by organizations in their charters and minutes from various organization-wide meetings, conventions, congresses, and conferences.

The Methodist Episcopal Church had, according to its 1844-45 Conference minutes, a Committee on Slavery that had “for several successive years past presented” their sentiments on slavery as “the great evil and sin of American Slavery.” Having restated their position several times already, but recognizing the importance of the matter they felt “duty bound” to again address slavery and make sure the church and world knew that “the slave in his bonds and deprivations has not lost our sympathy.”3 Following this with a commitment to abolishing the practice.

New Hampshire Methodists were not alone in this sentiment finding slavery a moral evil, offensive to God, and ruinous “to the best interests of the church and nation.” They further pronounced that the destiny of slavery was fixed, that the practice must die. Acknowledging that a schism was forming within the larger church, they were sure that Providence was on their side. The committee also predicted that a change was coming, that they would be “free from all connection” with the practice of slavery. To further state their position and to address the succession of southern churches they concluded the committee report with nine resolutions summarized here:

The committee resolved that the practice of slavery was a great evil. Traveling lecturers should denounce the practice of defending slavery through the pretext that it benefitted the slave. Through the secession of dissenting churches, they would be “ecclesiastically free from connection with this great evil.” If southern churches chose slavery over their alienation from the greater church, they should be pitied rather than deplored. Those in dissenting churches not holding slaves should join the northern churches in “spreading scriptural holiness.” The resolutions also included thanks to leadership supporting abolition and rebuking those dissenting and in favor of secession.

Conclusion

This division in the Methodist church over slavery took place a full fifteen years before the Secession Commissioners 4 took to the meetinghouses of the south and west to sow the seeds of secession in America. Slavery has been a part of American history since its inception. While the buying and selling of people is no longer legal, the underpinning concepts that allowed slavery to flourish are still with us. The concepts of us v. them and fear of the other, the dehumanization of the other, to refer to them as inferior, to justify abhorrent actions and inhumane treatment. This is evil.

  1. Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2016. ↩︎
  2. Liberty University, HIST 701 Historical Professions: Module 3: Blog: American Christianity. ↩︎
  3. Methodist Episcopal Church, New Hampshire Conference, Minutes of the New Hampshire Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Vol. 1844-45, Boston, MA: D.H. Ela, 1845. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926. Accessed April 5, 2025. 11-13. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0109925437/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=8aaaa08f&pg=1. ↩︎
  4. Dew, 2016. ↩︎

Experimental History

My current research is a historiographical pursuit to determine if Experimental History exists as a subfield of history. If it does exist, the research will seek out its methodologies and practices. If it does not already exist as a sub-field of history, the research will be to define working parameters and define appropriate methodologies. This will include acknowledging the similarities and differences between Experimental History and Experimental Archaeology.

I discovered this week that the term Experimental History has often applied to a philosophy applied to the study of Natural History in the 17th and 18th centuries by Francis Bacon who dubbed the philosophy “Natural and Experimental History.”1 Bacon’s use of this term has nothing to do with the practice and study of doing history as we think of it today. Searching for academic journal articles on JSTOR,2 the vast majority of search results for “Experimental History” refer to or relate to Bacon’s “Natural and Experimental History.”

A couple of relevant results did come up, one is an article in the journal The History Teacher, “A Pedagogical Trebuchet: A Case Study in Experimental History and History Pedagogy”3 from 2012 that utilizes Experimental History in the classroom to answer questions that would otherwise be unanswerable other than through hypothetical assertions.

My interpretation of Experimental History as a sub-field can, on the research end, help in producing improved tools and materials for Experiential Learning. Anyone who has worked with elementary school kids will likely have plenty of anecdotal experience with the potential of experiential learning. I came to my interpretation of what Experimental history could be through Experimental Archaeology, and one of the reasons I became interested in Experimental Archaeology was my own experience in experiential learning. This is how I learn best, through doing, and following that up with teaching someone else. The process of learning through experimentation and then turning around and teaching what you have learned through papers and presentations is the cornerstone and heart of Amateur Radio. The process works.

The idea behind Experimental History, in my interpretation, is for the researcher to engage in experiential learning, using experimentation along with traditional research to answer questions about the subject, and to apply the physicality of the experimentation and research contextually and physically to generate the resulting products of their research, which should include materials for pedagogical use. I am inclined toward producing products that can be applied in the public history sphere but are not limited to that environment. While the physicality of Experimental History can provide context to traditional outputs, that physicality shouldn’t be lost in the translation, Experimental History, as I interpret it, wants to bring the physicality to all interpretive environments, in the presentation, in the museum, and in the classroom.

This historiographical look at Experimental History and its applications in research and pedagogy is the foundation of my current work and is in its initial stage to understand what the literature is, if any, and to enumerate and evaluate the available sources if such sources exist. As literature emerges I will post it to a designated area of the site.

  1. Anstey, Peter R. “Locke, Bacon and Natural History.” Early Science and Medicine 7, no. 1 (2002): 65–92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4130409. ↩︎
  2. https://www.jstor.org/ ↩︎
  3. Brice, Lee L., and Steven Catania. “A Pedagogical Trebuchet: A Case Study in Experimental History and History Pedagogy.” The History Teacher 46, no. 1 (2012): 67–84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43264074. ↩︎

Benchmarking

I am just starting the second week of HIST 701 Historical Professions, and I am already finding the class interesting and challenging. This post will cover the interesting, I will do a second post on the challenging part shortly. One of this week’s assignments is a benchmarking assignment. I opted to look at graduate history programs here in Oregon, offered by institutions that report having graduate programs in history. Below is the paper submitted.

By: Jonathan Wanzer ORCiD 0009-0004-9275-7410
Submitted on: March 23, 2025
Submitted to: Dr. Schultz – Liberty University
Course: HIST 701 Historical Professions
Chicago Citation:
Wanzer, Jonathan. “Benchmarking Programs: History Programs at Universities in Oregon That Offer Graduate Degrees.” Paper. Historical Interpretations. Jonathan Wanzer, December 2, 2024. http://wanzer.org/2025/03/benchmarking/.

Benchmarking Programs: History Programs at Universities in Oregon That Offer Graduate Degrees

by Jonathan Wanzer
March 23, 2025
ORCID.org/0009-0004-9275-7410

This analysis focuses on degrees offered by colleges and universities with graduate programs in history in Oregon, the number of history degrees awarded in the 2022-2023 program year, and the percentage history degrees represent in the institution’s total degrees awarded. Data was collected from the National Center for Education Statistics, College Navigator website using the search parameters: Oregon, advanced degrees with the following Programs/Majors selected American History, General History, Public/Applied History.[1] The search results indicate that four Oregon universities offer advanced degrees in history. The Institutions indicated are; Oregon State University[2], Portland State University[3], University of Oregon[4], and Western Oregon University[5].

Oregon State University offers bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in history. In the program year, OSU awarded a total of 7,389 degrees, 5,829 bachelor’s, 1,140 master’s, and 420 doctorates. Of these, OSU awarded 59 bachelor’s and 4 master’s degrees in history, slightly over 1% and 0.35% respectively. A doctoral program in history is not available at OSU.

Portland State University offers bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in history. In the program year, PSU awarded a total of 5,621 degrees, 3,839 bachelor’s, 1,717 master’s, and 65 doctorates. Of these, PSU awarded 46 bachelor’s, and 4 master’s degrees in history, just under 1.2% and 0.23% respectively. A doctoral program is not available in history at PSU.

University of Oregon offers bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in history. In the program year, UO awarded a total of 5,441 degrees, 4,089 bachelor’s, 968 master’s, and 65 doctorates. Of these, UO awarded 59 bachelor’s, 1 master’s, and 1 doctorate in history, just over 1.4%, 0.10%, and 0.26%, respectively. UO is the only institution offering a doctorate in history in Oregon.

Western Oregon University only offers a bachelor’s degree program in history. In the program year, WOU awarded a total of 1,031 degrees, 855 bachelor’s and 176 master’s degrees. WOU does not offer doctorates in any field. Of the degrees WOU awarded, only 8 bachelor’s degrees were awarded in history, slightly over 0.93% of bachelor’s degrees.

The cumulative total of degrees awarded, bachelor and above, awarded in Oregon by institutions offering advanced degrees in the program year was 19,482 of those, 182 were in history, 172 bachelor’s degrees, 9 master’s degrees, and 1 doctorate, less than 0.01% of degrees awarded by Oregon institutions that offer advanced degrees. Just 10 of the 19,482 degrees were graduate or doctoral degrees.[6]

Oregon universities offer many graduate programs in business, medicine, and physical sciences, both residential and online. When it comes to the history or public history fields for history majors, particularly graduate degree programs the state’s universities do not provide much of an offering. Furthermore, all the programs in this study are residential, there are no graduate-level programs in history available online from Oregon’s universities. This is surprising in one sense considering the state’s many active historical societies and important museums. While this is disappointing for anyone seeking a graduate degree in Oregon, it is not that surprising. Anecdotally, a prior nationwide search for online graduate programs in history provided limited results, and only one online doctoral program was located in the United States, Liberty University’s online doctorate.[7]

APPENDIX

History Program Completions & Program Percentage of Institutional Total Awards[8]

UniversityDegree Level Degrees AwardedHistory % of Total
Oregon State UniversityUndergradHistory591.0122%
Univ. Total5829 
GraduateHistory40.3509%
Univ. Total1140 
DoctoralHistory *00.0000%
Univ. Total420 
 
Portland State UniversityUndergradHistory461.1982%
Univ. Total3839 
GraduateHistory40.2330%
Univ. Total1717 
DoctoralHistory *00.0000%
Univ. Total65 
 
University of OregonUndergradHistory591.4429%
Univ. Total4089 
GraduateHistory10.1033%
Univ. Total968 
DoctoralHistory10.2604%
Univ. Total384 
 
Western Oregon UniversityUndergraduateHistory80.9357%
Univ. Total855 
GraduateHistory *00.0000%
Univ. Total176 
Doctoral †History00.0000%
Univ. Total0 

Table 1. Data from College Navigator

* No history degree is offered at this level
† No doctoral programs available

[1] “College Navigator,” accessed March 23, 2025,  https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?s=OR&p=54.0102+54.0105+54.0101&l=94.

[2] “Oregon State University,” accessed March 23, 2025, https://oregonstate.edu/.

[3] “Portland State University,” accessed March 23, 2025, https://www.pdx.edu/.

[4] “University of Oregon,” accessed March 23, 2025, https://www.uoregon.edu/.

[5] “Western Oregon University,” accessed March 23, 2025, https://wou.edu/

[6] See Table 1 in the appendix

[7] Author conducted a search of U.S. colleges and universities in the summer of 2024 looking for online doctoral history programs.

[8] “College Navigator”

HIST 701 Historical Professions

I am closing in on the completion of the academics phase of my doctorate in history. After this class, I have two remaining academic classes, Development of Western Freedoms in the Summer term, and American Entrepreneurship Since 1900 in the first half of the Fall semester. Both look interesting and are within my period and topical interests. Then there is HIST 901 Doctoral History Research. I am looking forward to this class in the second half of the Fall semester. It is the transition point between the academics and comprehensives phases, while simultaneously being a part of the dissertation phase. In the last post, I mentioned this Fall being a soft start to the dissertation, this is why. I will still be a doctoral student until completion of the comprehensives when I will be considered a doctoral candidate. I can’t say I am looking forward to the Comprehensive Reading & Examination classes nearly as much as I am to 901.

One of the challenges for me in preparation for the comprehensives is that I am not a fast reader. I often have to slow down to digest the material and think about it at deeper levels, particularly if it is engaging material. This often requires looking things up tangentially to build a contextual picture. If I don’t stop to do this, my mind will continue to persaverate on the material which is very distracting when trying to push through a section or chapter. At times it requires putting down the material altogether and reset either by reading something else or writing for a while.

On an interesting note, this class requires us to produce a 3 to 4.5-minute discussion thread in video format along with an abstract, source list, and a link to the video every week. I like doing videos, I’m just not sure what form Dr. Schultz wants these to take, talking head, presentation, slides, it’s not really clear. I will have to find out.

Spring B-Term 2025 Update

It’s been a while since the last post, the fall term ended, we had a lovely winter break, and I’m at the mid-point of the Spring B-sub-term. This term’s class is Teaching History, and the project is developing a class in two forms: an 8-week online course and a 16-week residential course. I chose to design the class The Industrial Revolution in America 1790-1860. It is an undergraduate survey of the period, beginning with a brief history of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain for background, followed by Samual Slater’s immigration to America, covering the progression of the social, economic, and technological developments of the period, and ending with a look at how the effects of the Industrial Revolution contributed to slavery leading into the Civil War. This is an overview of one of the most important periods of American history.

The Spring D-sub-term’s class, Historical Professions, starts March 17th. It is “an overview of the discipline of history, patterns of historical research, history instruction, historical organizations and careers in history.”1

The site is progressing slowely as things develop. I am looking forward to posting articles in the near future to help build the content of the site. For now the blog is more of a reflections of the academic journey as move slowly closer to a doctorate.

  1. From the course description in the Liberty Catalog. https://www.liberty.edu/online/courses/hist701/ ↩︎

The Power of Food

To know someone, break bread with them.

Enjoying a meal with someone, or a group, is a great way to get them to open up, get to know them, and see who they are. I like to cook for special occasions, and eat of course. I am by no means a chef but many, many moons ago I worked as a line cook. I have always enjoyed the culinary arts and through personal experience, I have found that cooking foods that are historically appropriate in using historically appropriate ways can create sensory links to the period that enhance the memory and context.

Revolution period reenactors will likely recognize the online store and YouTube channel for Townsends. They have done a wonderful job of outfitting revolution reenactors for decades and John spends a lot of time on recipes and cooking in the 18th century. Over the years I have been inspired down more than one rabbit hole thanks to John’s research, it was one of my early inspirations to resume handwriting which led to further research, and an interest in transcription, graphology, and documentary editing.

The desire to be more experimental in the kitchen and to apply a food context to period research also grew out of watching the 18th century cooking videos John and Ryan put out. This is something I will be trying to engange with more in the new year.

~Jon

Timelines

As of this posting, this Timeline project is still in development. I wanted to post it to the site early and see how it goes. I am using TimelineJS which is a nice tool. I tried embedding it to the post but the post space is too narrow and it didn’t look right, not to mention you had to scroll up and down just to see the entire height of the timeline. The project link is here.

Timelines offer so many valuable visual possibilities for digital humanities and public history, there are two block plugins for WordPress which I will try to check out soon and see how they go, but for now, I’ll just post links to my TimelineJS timelines.

Expect an ETA on this post in the next few days.
~Jon

Bibliography

My last class for the M.A. in public history starts next week and runs for the 8-week D subterm. The course is HIST 706 Digital History which as you will see is somewhat ironic. I have been working with the topic for some time doing digitization projects, digital archiving, database development, and working with metadata structures to make digital objects findable, and accessible. I have burned more than a few cycles on the elements of digital archives like accessioning, cataloging, and preservation of the digital media as well as the metadata to keep it useful and locatable. This was much of what I did for my independent research over the summer preparing for this term.

HIST 706 became available to access yesterday. My usual ritual the week before a term is to prep my OneNote file for the class with all of the readings and assignments with as much of the course info available as possible and start getting resources ready. I usually have all of the textbooks well before this period, and after reading the syllabus and assignments I usually have a list of additional textbooks to order. Yesterday was no exception, OneNote was prepped and the five books specifically mentioned in the syllabus that were not on the book list were ordered. Surprisingly, all of the books ordered should arrive before the end of the first week. The day after the course posts I start watching course videos, synthesizing assignment instructions, and reviewing rubrics. The week four video caught me off guard.

The video for week four is a lecture by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum The Transformissions of the Archive. The lecture is interesting in and of itself, but it impacted me in a personal and unexpected way. I have been struggling with narrowing my field for my doctorate. Not surprising considering how broad my interests usually are and my proclivity for diving head first down deep rabbit holes. This video managed to focus my attention on synthesizing a concept I am well aware of with a genre of research interests. The concept of metadata, and my interests in books and documents, paper, ink, graphology, paleography, codicology, printmaking, bookbinding, and paper conservation. In a word… bibliography.

A couple of hours online have revealed very little on the practice of bibliography, lots on the writing of bibliographies, but sparse on the former. I located several books that look like they may be useful on Amazon and saved them in a list, 15 to be precise, and ordered 3 others. It will take some research on the field to determine what studies I will need to look further into. As for education, the closest I can find are MLA programs with an available focus on special collections and preservation. While I would like to add an MLA to my education profile, I don’t have the time right now but it could be added at some point in the future along with a master’s in conservation. For now, I’ll take on the research on the practice of bibliography and see where it takes me.

Until next time,
~Jon Wanzer

Paper Conservation Survey Results

Before going into the survey results from the Professional Opportunities Analysis project due today, I wanted to touch on the other two projects I covered in the last post. First, the media archive pilot project is moving forward. I have the framework of the website done on a local server and now I am working on the functionality aspects so I can start setting up the tables in the database. As for the documentary edition, I stopped by the museum and met with the principals, and after a review of the materials previously mentioned, it is clear that that project is a non-starter. However, they are interested in working on a doc ed of some kind with me. For now, they, and I will keep an eye out for good candidates for a doc ed, and other project possibilities were also discussed. I did make it clear that I was interested in opportunities to publish. More to come as the opportunities present.

Now on to the Survey

The Assignment

“In general, the goal of this assignment is for students to explore opportunities available within the fields of public history. Students should choose one opportunity to focus on for this assignment, and as long as you make the case that this opportunity fits for a historian as a professional opportunity it will work. There is no length minimum or maximum for this assignment. Instead students should focus on choosing one opportunity related to their field and then analyze how they might be able to engage this opportunity as part of their growth as a historian.”[1]

A Survey of New England Paper Conservators

Introduction

Preservation of documents, documentary editing, document interpretation, reproduction of documents for exhibit, handwritten document analysis and interpretation, and a variety of printing press processes are all related areas of practice that interest me and are important to consider. Among these history and public history related fields, paper conservation is one that stands out. With some experience in library book repair, several bookbinding projects, and rebinding projects completed with more awaiting attention, this is a specific field of interest and would be an important area to develop greater proficiency, expanding my abilities as I am exposed to more historically important documents and a broader array of document types in the museum environment. As relocation to the New England area in the near future is desired and likely, it is prudent to consider the field of paper conservation in the New England area. As no local practitioners of paper conservation have been located or field academics within a reasonable distance, a more clinical approach using a survey to gather data was chosen to explore the field of paper conservation primarily looking at the current demographics of conservators in the geographical area and their impression of the state of the field with regard to the education of candidates for entry into the field.

The Survey

A 10-question survey was developed to focus on 5 demographic questions and 5 opinion questions on the state of the field regarding new entrants into paper conservation, what education the respondents felt candidates should have, and whether or not the academy was producing sufficiently qualified candidates in sufficient numbers. The survey was sent to members of the American Institute for Conservation who identified as Paper Conservators, specifically in books, and documents, and practiced in New England. This provided a narrow scope in field and geographic boundaries and resulted in a pool of 115 conservators invited to participate in the survey. The survey was hosted by SurveyMonkey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/H2TJLVR.
The survey was closed on September 21.

The respondent Pool

The first round of invitations consisted of conservators of Connecticut (22), Maine (5), New Hampshire (5), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (4). Once responses subsided a second round of invitations was sent out to conservators in Massachusetts (75) which provided some limited information on the differences in areas of high and low professional density. The total size of the pool was 115 potential respondents.

Questions & Responses

To simplify the report of responses, an interpretation of the results will accompany each question and statistical data and an overall interpretation of the results will serve as the conclusion.

Demographic Questions

Question 1: In what sphere do you practice paper conservation?

One option that was not originally in the answer options was the possibility of a respondent practicing in both spheres. This possibility was subsequently added to the results.

With the additional category, the respondents were nearly equal in private practice and institutional service. Significantly, the first round respondents were predominantly private practice while the second round respondents were predominantly institutional. This is an example of the rationale for the presumption of an effect of higher professional density later in the survey.

Question 2: What kind of institution? (skip if private practice)

In response to this question, there were two areas that were not originally considered and subsequently added, the hybrid library/museum, and nonprofit conservation organization. Fields that received no responses were municipal government, small local museums, university or research libraries, and undergraduate education libraries.

Not surprisingly, museums and academic institutions placed strongly. What was surprising was the representation of nonprofit conservancy. This again seems to have been in part due to professional density.

Question 3: In your private practice who do you contract with? (skip if institutional)

For this question, there were two unexpected categories, auction house/gallery, and historical society. All other categories had at least one respondent. Both additional categories were from round two respondents.

Aside from the two additional categories, the breakdown of private practitioners was predominantly what was expected with a vast majority of respondents including museums of all sizes, academic institutions, and private individuals.

Question 4: Did you train academically to be a conservator?

An added category to this question was a degree or certificate in bookbinding. As the categories used to locate practitioners included document and book conservators as well as general paper conservators, this should have been anticipated. One category was not selected, working on a degree in conservation while working in the field.

One surprise for this question was the lack of any respondents for “working on a degree in conservation while working in the field,” that a conservator would start with an apprenticeship or internship and then progress to a degree while working in the field was expected.

Question 5: How long have you been in the conservation field?

No respondents for less than 5 years or 11-15 years.

From a data standpoint, the experience embodied in responses from a pool of practitioners in the field for predominantly more than 15 years is good. The lack of practitioners less than 5 years is a little disconcerting.

State of the field questions

Upon reflection on the responses, the survey should have included an additional comment option rather than another answer. The additional data was of good quality and should have been encouraged positively in the survey design.

Question 6: There are enough trained candidates for entry-level conservator positions.

There were no responses for strongly disagree.

Respondents had comments that should be considered. One expressed a shortage in paper art conservators and noted that a majority gravitate to libraries and archives. Another noted with the narrow nature of the field and the longevity of practitioners as seen in the demographics makes entry into the field difficult. They also indicated that entry-level positions, thus lower paying positions, could last many years while the now seasoned practitioner waits for an opening to move up. It is worth noting that these comments were from second round respondents which begs the question, is this more of a high density issue, or is it field wide?

Question 7: The academy is sufficiently preparing candidates for employment in the field.

There were no responses for strongly agree.

The responses to this question clearly lean from center to agree.

Question 8: Enough institutions are providing conservation-specific education.

All segments were included.

This question has an even response on both sides from the center. One respondent commented, “while there are limited institutions for education, there are also limited opportunities for a career. It would be nice to have more people have access but if there are not enough jobs, that creates a new problem. The field is very small, requires a significant amount of training, and has a high level of competition so you get highly qualified or over qualified candidates, and the pay does not reflect the effort and expected education/experience needed to enter the field.”

Question 9: Specialization in the field has outpaced the academy training provided for degrees.

This question received no strong response in either direction.

This question appears to be irrelevant to a majority of respondents. This is likely due to the already specialized nature of paper conservation.

Question 10: A candidate for work in the field should have at least…

An addition was made to the potential paths to paper conservation which should have been anticipated. The only path not selected was an undergraduate degree in a related field.

A requisite graduate degree in conservation was the major response by far.

Summary & Conclusion

The field of paper conservation is a narrow space to begin with, the addition of a relatively small geographical boundary further limited the pool of potential respondents. A one week time allotment for respondents to reply, and the nature of cold-calling the invitation limited the responses from the pool still further. The survey did get a 15.6% response rate which is reasonable for a survey. Generally speaking, surveys usually get 10% response rates +/- 3% so this was respectable.

Demographically respondents were evenly split between institutional and private practice with a majority working in academic or medium to large museum environments and an equally strong showing of nonprofit conservation organizations. Private practice responses were predominantly academic institutions and museums with a strong showing for private individual clients. Most respondents had a degree in conservation and had been in practice for over 20 years.

With regard to the state of the field in educational preparedness of candidates, most respondents felt there were enough candidates to fill positions in the field, and few disagreed. A majority of respondents agree that candidates are prepared for employment, presuming they enter the field with a graduate degree in conservation, and while the number of institutions offering this training is small, it produces enough candidates. The responses indicate that the field is so narrow to begin with that there is no sense specialization has outpaced training.

If you are interested in paper conservation as a career, plan on needing a master’s in conservation. Once completed be prepared to be in an entry level position for a while. If you can find an apprenticeship while in school jump on it and get the bench skills in while working on the academics. Paper conservation is a very narrow field within conservation an already narrow field. People who enter this line of work and stick with it stay there for decades.

For me personally, institutional or academic conservation as a career is a non-starter. I am too far along in life with too many obligations and too far down my educational path. This does not preclude private practice in the future presuming I continue in public history and build my skills with credible training in conservation, which is very likely to happen. I prefer to live in lower density environments and this is conducive to opportunities in private practice with small museums and history associations. The key is to continue with conservation specific training and practice.

[1] Professional Opportunities Analysis Assignment Instructions, Module 5, HIST 705, Local History, Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA, Fall 2024.

Pilot Project and More

The intention was to post last month but the workload for school has been heavier than expected. The pilot project included in the last post, building an organization’s media archive has been going well. One of the first determinations was that Omeka would not be the platform solution for the project. Omeka is a fine platform, but it is too complex for the organizations environment, personnel, the single media type, and the minimal metadata needs. In this case a simpler PHP/HTML front end for a small database will be more effective and easier to train the organization’s staff on if they decide to continue with the project after the pilot program is completed in December. As of today, the server is built, the platform software (a Linux system with Apache, MariaDB, and PHP [a LAMP server]) is installed, now it’s time to work on the database tables and a simple front end. This will likely be the main daily activity well into October.

In the Local History / Public History class, the next assignment is to analyze an occupation in the field/sub-field of interest, paper conservation was the choice I made as this is an area of great interest to me. Without any local practitioners or local educational resources the decision was made to dive in with a survey of practitioners. The survey is very narrow demographically and geographically, as well as being specific to paper conservation for books and documents, it is limited to the New England area. I would like to relocate to Maine in the near future so the geographic location made sense. Due to the narrow confines imposed, there was a total pool of 115 practitioners invited. As of this writing, there have been 16 respondents, 13.9%, which is pretty good. The hope is to have as close as possible to a 30% response which is asking a lot. Anyone having done a survey by cold-emailing professionals in a field knows anything above 10% is a good response. There are a few more days before the paper needs to be written so we shall see how close I get. The survey has 5 demographic questions and 5 questions on the education of new candidates to the field. SurveyMonkey was used because I have used that tool in the past. The results that have come in have provided an idea for a more detailed research project, an expanded version of this paper, that could make for an interesting journal article. SurveyMonkey is out of the question for an expanded research project, however, they have gotten far more expensive than is practical. Poking around a bit, I found a survey platform that can be added to an existing website and was easy to install and get started. The platform still needs to be explored and learned. This platform could make conducting survey research in a way that fits my workflow and reduces time to process and publish without spending a lot of money for what should be basic feature sets much easier.

Including the two projects above, a collection management system and a research project on paper conservators, there is also a documentary edition project that may move forward. On a recent visit to the local museum, while talking with one of the collections staff about another project for class, they brought up a journal they saw in one of the archive spaces that sounded like it would make a good candidate for a documentary edition for publication. An interest in pursuing this project has been expressed, as of yet no response, however, an in-person follow up will be forthcoming as this would be an enjoyable project and a solid CV / portfolio builder.

Until next time,
~Jon

Edited 21 SEP 2024