ANTHRONOTESTM

MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY PUBLICATION FOR EDUCATORS

VOLUME 33

No. 2

FALL 2012

GOING DIGITAL

“I find some jewel in each AnthroNotes,” wrote one linguistics professor, and a California teacher assured us: “every issue has something I can use in class.” In July, a former teacher, museum professional and amateur archaeologist wrote from Mt. Desert Island, Maine: “It’s probably been decades that I’ve…enjoyed your informative newsletter. The issues not kept for reference [go] to the local library [where] they are widely read…your work is appreciated.”

This special issue marks our thirty-third year of publication – and our print to digital rite of passage. While preparing our last print issue, however, we can also announce that AnthroNotes soon will be re-purposed by using technology to scan, convert, upload, package, tag, and recombine 33 years of materials that will become even more accessible, usable, relevant, and connected for teachers and the general public. Under the guidance of our new digital editor and anthropologist Colleen Popson, currently with the National Museum of Natural History Office of Education and Outreach, we will be “bundling” AnthroNotes articles and teaching activities under topics of wide interest, such as Human Origins, Africa, Arctic cultures, Evolution, Asia, Race, Archaeology, and Languages. We hope that AnthroNotes will gain even greater relevance to classrooms around the globe. We will keep you posted at http://anthropology.si.edu/outreach/outrch1.html.

At our 25th anniversary symposium in Denver, Colorado, held at the Society for American Archaeology’s annual meeting, former SAA President Jeremy Sabloff spoke about AnthroNotes’ mission of keeping its readers up-to-date on developments in the field. “This mission,” Sabloff said, “has been fulfilled in an exciting and stimulating if not daring manner…not by publishing bland syntheses of consensus on ‘safe’ topics, but by offering well-edited pieces of cutting-edge thinking by major scholars in the field.”

AnthroNotes has always been a labor of love – even at its creation as part of the NSF-funded George Washington University (GWU)-Smithsonian Institution Anthropology for Teachers Program. AnthroNotes grew into a 20-page publication with research-based articles and classroom-tested teaching activities. Today the AnthroNotes mailing list includes almost 10,000 pre-college, university, and museum anthropologists and educators from all 50 states and 50 countries worldwide. Through its digital version available on the internet, AnthroNotes reaches tens of thousands of readers worldwide.

Throughout our history, AnthroNotes editors have tried to choose topics central to the discipline but of wide interest. Articles are written by leading scholars specializing in the chosen topic. Many of these articles have been reprinted in other volumes for even wider classroom use.

AnthroNotes reflects the many changes that anthropology has gone through over the past three decades. For example, lead articles reflect the discipline’s growing concerns with relevance, social issues, collaboration, and close ties to the communities studied, as well as anthropologists’ increased involvement in the social and international issues of their day. Today we see an anthropology discipline with new agendas, increased access to data, use of new technologies, and a deeper involvement with communities, including Native colleagues and collaborators.

In 2002, the SAA honored AnthroNotes with the Society’s Excellence in Public Education Award “for contributions to the public understanding of anthropology and archaeology.” The award also recognized the compendium of AnthroNotes articles, Anthropology Explored: The Best of Smithsonian AnthroNotes, edited by Ruth O. Selig and Marilyn R. London. In 2004 a revised, expanded 2nd edition was published – edited by Selig, London, and P. Ann Kaupp, along with an online Instructor’s Guide.

Through time, our mission has remained the same, but our staff has changed. Our cartoon illustrator, GWU anthropology professor Robert L. Humphrey, passed away in 2002. Bob’s cartoons offered our readers humor and insight, and fortunately, we have been able to continue using them. In 2008, JoAnne Lanouette retired from both the Sidwell Friends School and from AnthroNotes. She was replaced by Carolyn Gecan, long-time anthropology teacher at Fairfax County, Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. The three founding editors – Alison S. Brooks, P. Ann Kaupp and Ruth O. Selig – have continued, although Ruth retired from her Smithsonian staff position in 2010. Ann is retiring December 29, 2012, and Carolyn Gecan retired in 2012 from her teaching position in Virginia.

The Museum of Natural History that has supported the printing of AnthroNotes is creating a new Learning Center, opening in 2013 (see pp. 15-17 of this issue). Fortunately, anthropology will be an important part of the Center and its outreach. We encourage our readers to continue accessing not only AnthroNotes resources online, but also all the educational offerings of the Museum (http://www.mnh.si.edu/education/).

The AnthroNotes Editors