The AHA has partnered with WebsEdge of London, UK to produce HistoriansTV, a daily television program during the 123rd Annual Meeting (January 2-5, 2009 in New York City).  Each day of the meeting a new 30-minute news program will be broadcast which will include interviews with key speakers, news from the conference floor, and several five-minute “thought leadership films” (pre-recorded) that will highlight programs, policies, technologies, best practices, and institutions that advance the goal of historical research, collections, and education. These feature segments will profile historical research centers, government agencies, libraries and archives, schools, colleges and universities, museums, and institutions from around the country.

The program will be broadcast in registrant hotel rooms and around the meeting venues.  It will also be available on a designated web site after the meeting and on HistoriansTV DVDs to be made available to members after the meeting.

We have entered into this arrangement specifically to join with our members in raising the profile of our joint efforts and highlight the innovation and leadership shown by institutions such as yours.

If your institution would be interested in working with WebsEdge to produce one of the five-minute feature segments, please contact Mark Rose at HistoriansTV by October 20th. If you are selected to participate, your institution will be featured in the daily news program at the AHA Annual Meeting (and on a specially created web site afterwards). You will have full use of your organization’s five-minute video for outreach, education and training, marketing or recruitment purposes after the Annual Meeting. Your organization will be provided with all footage shot during the production of the five-minute segment. WebsEdge typically shoots about an hour and a half of footage to produce the five-minute final product, which you would be able to re-edit for a longer version or an additional video.

Again, if you are interested in pursuing this opportunity, please contact Mark Rose by October 20th. There are a limited number of thought leadership film slots available. HistoriansTV will charge participating organizations $19,500 for expenses related to the production of your feature segment. The expenses cover production, travel to your location, camera crew, a reporter, and film editing.

Topics to be highlighted – AHA will work with WebsEdge to select organizations and topics for the thought leadership segments that represent the variety of issues across our membership. We are interested in featuring organizations that have best practices to share in historical scholarship, globalizing historiography (our central theme for the 2009 conference), education, research, public history, and collections of historical significance.

For a better understanding of what the programming will be like, we invite you to view the news channel produced by WebsEdge (for the International City/County Managers Association) at www.icmatv.com

Please submit your notice of interest to participate to Mark Rose at HistoriansTV by October 20th. Mark can be reach via e-mail at mark@websedge.com . We will notify organizations that are chosen to participate no later than October 24th so that we can complete filming in time for the conference.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.