The future of NCAH

As managing editor of the Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians, I have been doing quite a bit of thinking about the role of a general historians’ association with members of widely varying educational levels and (sometimes) occupations.

When the Association was formed in the 1970s as the Association of Historians in North Carolina, it brought together practicing academics and emerging graduate students.  Public historians joined its ranks, and a few secondary school teachers.  In the 1970s, an era of uncertainty in higher education, the Association served, as well, independent scholars and those who chose career paths outside the academy.  These constituent groups have, more ore less, remained constant throughout the organization’s history.

NCAH still welcomes these core groups a generation later, and that is a very positive thing.  Diverse groups can be dynamic and (to borrow a coined term from business) synergistic.

Does this new era in which we live change things for NCAH?

I am blogging on a website that I built – something that would have been inconceivable twenty-three years ago.  With a click of the “publish” button, I can send this reflective piece of early morning writing onto the Internet, where it will become instantly accessible.

As I sip my coffee and watch the sun brighten this beautiful spring day, I wonder how NCAH might use the resources at its disposal to serve its members to the best degree possible.

I will end this post with two questions.  They are the sorts of questions any long-standing association should ask from time to time.

Question 1:  Is there still need for a generalist association of historians?  (Okay, okay, it’s a rhetorical question, and my answer is “Yes.”  I’ll elaborate another time.)

Question 2:  What are some specific ways in which the North Carolina Association of Historians can serve its present and future constituency, composed of historians inside and outside academe  (and with a presence on the Internet that is growing, historians inside and outside of North Carolina)?

Kathy Carter, Ph.D.
Managing Editor, JNCAH
Web Developer, www.ncassnhistorians.org
Deep River Press