ABSTRACT
History museums are located in every state, every major city, and in many small towns. From urban centers to rural towns, these museums cover a wide range of events, people, groups, and themes in United States and world history. More specifically, there are three types of resources available at most history museums: physical resources, human resources, and online resources. The physical resources include buildings and other physical structures, artifacts, and exhibitions. The human resources are museum employees who are trained authorities in artifact collection, exhibit creation, history, and education. The virtual resources include archives, online exhibits, databases, simulations, lesson plans, and field-trip planning information. Local history museums can have many of the same design characteristics as the artifact and display museums, but also provide a number of other attributes and resources. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
