Content and Focus: Historic houses offer different challenges and opportunities than do other museum exhibition venues. These historic structures are located on their original sites (often with strict restrictions on modification) and may be filled with fragile, original furnishings. Natural light, challenging climates, and small rooms pose issues for exhibition developers. While it is the museum’s obligation to protect the historic structure and original collections it is also its obligation to actively engage its audience with compelling issues that align with community interests. How do we exhibit, preserve, and protect the historic house and its collections yet at the same time use “real things” to make the house highly accessible and engaging to a broad public?

This is a call for manuscripts that discuss and explore three topics fundamental to historic house management and interpretation. We seek manuscripts that address any of these three topics: • What are some innovative or ingenious ways historic house staffs are monitoring, protecting, and caring for the collections? How does an institution deal with original windows and natural light, rotation of collections that may be original to the house, or intrusive barriers that protect but are an eyesore? (Case studies in which recent technological developments such as new lighting systems, innovative barriers and alarms, etc. are most welcome.)
• How have historic houses successfully engaged its board and community to re-think the use and interpretation of the community’s historic house?
• How can we provide active learning and compelling interpretation in these environments that have original furnishings and small rooms? How do we provide increased access but protect what may be irreplaceable collection items?

Submission process and deadline: The deadline for submission is May 15, 2013. Publication is anticipated for volume 9 of Collections, with an issue date of 2013. Manuscript guidelines are available from the Editor and online. Submit all queries, abstracts and papers via email to the guest editor and journal editor via email at: nbryk@umich.edu and jdecker1@georgetowncollege.edu

About the journal: Established in 2004, Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals welcomes manuscript submissions. Published by AltaMira Press, Collections is a multidisciplinary journal for all aspects of handling, preserving, researching, interpreting, and organizing collections. For this issue, we are seeking articles of 15-25 manuscript pages, 3-6 page opinion pieces, reviews, technical columns, and observations. See https://rowman.com/Page/Journals for more information about the journal.