The underlying premise for this book is that historical organizations, including history departments, can no longer wait for their phones to ring or someone to knock on their doors. Therefore, the focus of this book is the attempts by history museums, historical societies, preservation groups, and academic history departments to create history outreach programs in order to better serve their constituents, students, communities, and nontraditional audiences. Case study articles, written by leading historians in the field of public history, address the need for historical organizations to develop outreach programs and provide descriptions of programs created to effectively take institutions out into the community.
