Speakers Bureau

Subject matter experts from the Wisconsin Veterans Museum staff welcome the opportunity to present to your group. Most presentations last 45-60 minutes and require a projector and screen. While no speaker fee is required, donations to the museum are welcomed to offset travel costs. Presentations are dependent upon speaker availability. If a topic of interest is not listed below, please contact us.

Submit a request for a presentation at your organization, club, or event.

MUSEUM

Intro to the Wisconsin Veterans Museum
Founded by Civil War veterans in 1901, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum has grown from a small room in the State Capitol building filled with Civil War artifacts to an award winning museum that preserves and shares the stories of Wisconsin veterans from the Civil War to the present through exhibits, programs, and other educational activities. Learn more about this vital Wisconsin institution and some of the stories it preserves in this presentation.

CIVIL WAR

Faces of the Iron Brigade
Comprised of men from the 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin Infantry Regiments, as well as the 19th Indiana and 24th Michigan, the “Iron Brigade” earned its reputation as one of the fiercest fighting units in the Union Army. Though their battlefield exploits are well recorded in history, the part that is sometimes overlooked is the human element of the men behind the heroic name. Thought artifacts, images, and firsthand accounts, “Faces of the Iron Brigade” will shed light on the humanity of the men who made history.

The Grand Army of the Republic
The GAR was the national organization for Civil War veterans that existed from 1866 to 1956. It left a significant legacy, including the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. This presentation will give an overview of the GAR and its activities.

Wisconsin Was There in the Civil War
Wisconsinites served in all theaters of the Civil War. This presentation focuses on three lesser-known Wisconsin Civil War stories tied to important Civil War events: the 8th Wisconsin in the Vicksburg Campaign, Arthur MacArthur at Missionary Ridge, and William Cushing sinking CSS Albemarle in North Carolina.

WORLD WAR I

Beyond the Trenches: Wisconsin Stories from World War I
Wisconsin went to war reluctantly in 1917, but by the Armistice in 1918 the Badger State’s veterans made important contributions to Allied victory. The war left an important legacy visible in the Wisconsin National Guard and at various places on the state’s geography. This talk will examine the war through the accounts and stories of Wisconsin veterans on land, sea, and air.

WORLD WAR II

Bloody Buna: the 32nd Division's Baptism of Fire in World War II
The Wisconsin-Michigan 32nd Division fought at Buna in New Guinea and completed the first victorious Allied campaign of the Pacific War. However, the battle was difficult as the Americans and Australians battled the weather and terrain along with a determined enemy. This talk will discuss the battle, some of its participants and their experiences, and what it meant for Wisconsin.

Douglas MacArthur As Leader
Wisconsin’s Douglas MacArthur was one of World War II’s dominant personalities. He fought longer in the Pacific than virtually any other officer, winning important victories. This talk will examine his leadership style and his key battles from 1941 to 1945.

Leadership Lessons from the Battle of the Bulge
The Ardennes Offensive (aka the Battle of the Bulge) in December 1944 was the largest battle ever fought by the US Army. Using case studies from the battle and the museum’s exhibits, this talk explores important lessons for leaders of any organization.

KOREAN WAR

The Korean War: An Overview
Korea was an active battleground between 1950 and 1953, in a conflict that was the first United Nations war. This presentation will give an overview of the war, its context, and relevance today.

 ORAL HISTORY

Wisconsin Veterans Tell Their Stories
The Wisconsin Veterans Museum has one of the largest veterans’ oral history collections in the United States. This program features unique audio and video content from Wisconsin veterans in the collection. This brief overview is meant to familiarize the public with our oral history program and oral history in general.

Interviewing, Theory, Process, and Techniques
This three-part in-depth class is meant to be a beginner’s level training for people who want to conduct oral history interviews. There are three parts to the course. Part one covers the theory, ethics, and principles of conducting oral history interviews. Part two explains the pre-interview processes and the interview guide development. Part three reveals some good interview techniques.

Oral History Interviewing Practicum
This hands-on course familiarizes interviewers with recording equipment and techniques related to in-person interviewing. The lab explains what good and bad recording practices are and specifics regarding recording technology and how to implement using it. In preparation for their first interview, participants will take turns interviewing their peers and applying the theory and knowledge acquired in the theory, processing, and technique course.

How to Use Past Perfect for Oral Histories
The purpose of this quick course is to show students how they can use the museum database program Past Perfect for oral history cataloging. The Archive, Oral History, and Custom panels/tabs will be covered in detail during this course. Specific topics include planning for metadata, exportation of metadata, lexicon, custom fields, data entry, archival location, archival notes, external links, linking photographs, controlled vocabularies, and much more.

How to Catalog Oral Histories Using OCLC
The purpose of this quick class is to teach the student how to use the Online Computer Library Catalog (OCLC) for cataloging oral histories on WorldCat.Org. The content covers using navigating and creating bibliographic and local holdings records for oral histories using constant data records and manual data entry. Topics include Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), controlling headings, field formatting, validation, electronic location, date formatting, locking, producing, save files, and much more. This course is aimed at beginning OCLC users for oral history audio and video cataloging specifically.

Implementing the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) at Your Organization
This course would be helpful to those people trying to decide if they should implement the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) at their organization. We will look at differing implementations at various museums, archives, libraries, universities, and organizations. The class covers the archival concepts of findability, accessibility, usability, and sustainability as they apply to OHMS. The course also explains the specifics necessary to implement this application for an oral history program and the basic steps required to get your OHMS viewer set-up. Topics include file structure, folder structure, permissions, metadata, and media player appearance.

How to Index Oral Histories Using the Oral History Metatdata Synchronizer (OHMS)
This course teaches the student how to use indexing with OHMS to help patrons find, access, and make oral history content usable. The two different techniques for indexing with OHMS are covered in-depth.

How to Use Transcriptions with the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS)
This course teaches the student how to implement transcripts in OHMS. The workflow for transcript implementation will be explained from transcript formatting to uploading and synchronization. Specific issues that come up when making transcripts available in OHMS will be covered.

 GENEALOGY

Finding Those Who Served: Military Genealogy
Do you have a veteran in your family tree? In this presentation, learn about sources, tips, and tricks that you can use to learn about your military ancestor from the Civil War to the present. Presentations below focus on a particular conflict.

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