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300 N. Stonestreet Avenue, Rockville, MD 20850-1655 - (301) 279-9697
588 Explorer Street, Brea, CA 92821-3108 - (714) 529-3953
CALL US:
(301) 279-9697
CALL US:
(301) 279-9697
Brian W. Martin leads the company and supports his colleagues in serving clients. Since joining History Associates in 1984 he has worked with hundreds of corporate and government clients to answer their historical questions, tell their stories, and manage their records. To establish the historical facts at issue in a variety of legal matters, Dr. Martin has developed research plans and led projects that examine historical developments in the chemical, petroleum, aerospace, nuclear, metals, electrical, transportation, and other industries. He is an expert in gaining access to public records and researching the historical context of American business-government relations, the military-industrial complex, and environmental regulation. He has also investigated water rights issues, Native American claims, occupational health matters, and government contract disputes. Dr. Martin has provided expert witness testimony in several cases.
Dr. Martin directed various historical projects for a major energy company celebrating its centennial and wrote a labor relations history for a federal power marketing administration. He also coordinates History Associates’ role with the Lockheed Martin team building the multi-million-dollar Electronic Records Archive for the National Archives and Records Administration. Since 2005 he has served on the board as treasurer of the National Coalition for History.
Dr. Martin earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Gettysburg College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his master’s degree in applied history and social science and his Ph.D. in history and policy from Carnegie Mellon University.
Donald Donoghue, CPA, handles History Associates’ financial reporting and operations, accounting systems, contracts administration, budgeting, and related activities. He directs the financial affairs of the firm, including the administrative and financial aspects of History Associates’ contractual arrangements with its private, government, and nonprofit clients. Mr. Donoghue has more than eighteen years of accounting experience and graduated with distinction from Mount St. Mary’s University with an MBA in Finance.
Kenneth D. Durr started with History Associates in 1991. He oversees a wide range of projects including books and monographs, on-line histories and time lines, chronologies, and oral history programs. An accomplished business, labor, and political historian, Dr. Durr has coauthored The Roadway Story, Never Stand Still: The History of Consolidated Freightways, Inc. and CNF Transportation Inc., 1929-2000 and Milestones in the Company that Helped Build America, a history of International Harvester. Other works he has authored include One Union, a history of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (AFL-CIO, CLC); Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980, a study of working-class politics published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2003; A Company With A Mission: Rodman Rockefeller and the International Basic Economy Corporation, 1947-1980; and Life of the Party: Kenneth F. Simpson and the Survival of the Republicans in 1930s New York. Dr. Durr also has an extensive background in the history of U.S. financial regulation, particularly the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission. He earned a bachelor’s degree in American studies at Kent State University and holds master’s and doctoral degrees in twentieth-century American political and social history from American University, where he has also served as an adjunct professor.
James H. Lide joined History Associates in 1988. He provides historical research and archival services for a variety of overseas and domestic clients. He oversees research projects relating to World War II-era claims arising from looted art, forced labor practices in Germany, and Holocaust assets and has extensive experience working at archives throughout Europe. Dr. Lide also directs historical research for museum exhibits, including projects for the U.S. National Archives, the International Spy Museum, and the National D-Day Museum. Most recently, he has directed research projects relating to the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the United States on behalf of financial institutions in the United States and Europe. Dr. Lide earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors degrees in history and economics. He received a master of studies in European history from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in European history from the University of Maryland at College Park. Dr. Lide was a Fulbright scholar in Morocco, and his language skills include French, Italian, Spanish, and Modern Standard Arabic. He has recently been listed in Who’s Who in America.
Doris E. Miles’ responsibilities include new employee orientations; personnel recruitment; benefits coordination; ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local laws governing employment; and serving as a human relations liaison for employees and management. She also coordinates all aspects of managing the History Associates facility. Ms. Miles was formerly the human resources manager at Liberty Mutual Insurance in Rockville, Maryland.
Michael C. Reis has managed a diverse range of projects since he joined History Associates in 1995. These projects include multiple investigations for determining environmental site histories and a team effort to locate Nazi gold-related documents on behalf of the U.S. Treasury Department. He also has expertise in documenting corporate succession, reconstructing legislative histories, and providing historic context statements for preservation and cultural resources management. Mr. Reis holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Loyola College and a master’s degree in history from The George Washington University. He is coauthor, with the late Michael T. Janik, of an article on rediscovering World War II federal contracting rules for use in CERCLA retroactive liability cases. He is also author of “Searching in the Past” (Legal Times, March 10, 2003), a comprehensive article describing how historians can assist attorneys in litigation settings, and “Wartime Mobilization and the Newark Bay Home Front Environment: A Case Study Revealing Opportunity for Federal Leadership in Resolving Mega Site Problems” (Environmental Claims Journal 18, Fall 2006). In addition, Mr. Reis recently presented “Getting Needed Information from Government Archives,” a continuing accredited legal education (CLE) course outline for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute.
Anne Strong is responsible for marketing initiatives at History Associates. She directs the development of the firm’s marketing and messaging strategy, implements tactical communication plans, and assists with new business development. Ms. Strong brings over twenty years of marketing and client management experience to the company, having served in many diverse industries including financial services, marketing services, executive recruiting, information services, consumer goods, and broadcasting.
Ms. Strong is a member of the American Marketing Association and is a volunteer with the D.C. Chapter. She holds B.S. degrees in biology and psychology from Syracuse University. Follow her on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/astrong.
Anita M. Weber has been with History Associates since 1996. She serves as project manager for several History Associates projects, including a map rehousing project where she supervises a team of three archivists who are appraising, arranging, describing, and performing basic conservation tasks for the Library of Congress’s Geography and Maps Division; the Anacostia Museum nomenclature project; and a series of processing projects for the National Library of Medicine. During her tenure at History Associates, Ms. Weber assisted West Virginia University’s Institute of Technology in a survey of the records holdings in West Virginia’s fifty-five county courthouses. She also served as project manager for an Army Corps of Engineers processing project and processed a large collection of twentieth-century business and personal papers. Ms. Weber has more than twenty years of experience with personal and corporate records working in repositories including the Northern Illinois Regional History Center and the George C. Marshall Research Foundation and as creator of the Timken Company Archives, where she processed the family papers of founders William and Henry Timken. Prior to joining History Associates, Ms. Weber served as archivist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History where she was responsible for both the museum’s corporate records and special collections material. In addition to processing the records, she regularly designed exhibits on various facets of the museum’s history. Ms. Weber holds a master of library science degree from Kent State University. She also earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history and pursued Ph.D. studies at Northern Illinois University.
Darlene Wilt has been with History Associates since 1989. She is responsible for overseeing and managing the company’s Information Technology infrastructure. She purchases all computer hardware, software, and peripheral equipment and maintains the company’s network environment.
The amount of on-line content continues to grow exponentially, making the Internet an indispensable tool in historical research. Clay Johnson, on-line database expert and author of the cleverly written book The Information Diet, contends that with so much readily available on-line data, it is critical to make informed choices, maintaining a “healthy diet” of information consumption. We find his point especially pertinent when the stakes are high, such as in legal issues.
Law firms have ready access to a vast array of information, and there are many excellent on-line resources available. This can represent a huge savings in time and effort in compiling research; however, like an all-you-can-eat buffet, one must be careful—the buffet likely includes lots of bad choices. Without a research plan, it is remarkably easy to spend too much time and end up with a fat pile of material that is high in volume but low in usable information. In short, if your case has a historical dimension, it’s critical to be an educated and conscious consumer of your on-line resources. Here’s a recipe for becoming more savvy, drawn from our experience.
Create Your Ideal Meal Plan
Before you launch into the research for documentation, think carefully through the issue at hand and frame questions neutrally so as not to skew results. Capture useful historical context prior to embarking on your search. Make a note of any agencies or organizations you believe would have collected data relevant to your issue-the more precise you can be, the better. Identify your geographic locus, if any, as well as key people, building your list of the latter as you can. Then ask: what types of records are you most interested in finding, did these agencies and organizations create or receive them, and what’s your critical time frame? You’ll end up with a list of ideal data sets to look for, like “Centralia, Washington, city records listing factory sales in the 1940s,” or “ICC shipment records filed by the Nickel Plate Railroad in 1972-1975.”
Seek Only the Healthiest Sources
Once you’ve defined your desired records, look beyond Wikis to get to the meat of what’s available. Wikipedia and similar sites can be a good and even appetizing start to informing your search, but there are serious pitfalls to user-generated content. A college student once unobtrusively inserted the phrase “And then he became a clown and died” at the end of hundreds of biographical profiles of former members of Congress (true!). Imagine that “fact” slipping into discovery! Enlist your law librarian or historical consultant to determine the reliable resources that are likely to have the types of documents you’ve identified, and where those on-line tools can best be accessed.
Conduct a Well-Balanced Search
Many national papers such as the New York Times as well as a large number of local papers and trade journals are now on-line. Keep in mind that they might not be available directly from your computer; many are accessible only in person at a local or state library. The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., has numerous resources available on-line. Federal government resources on the Web have also increased exponentially in recent years. For example, the EPA has an extensive publications library that captures even elusive reports going back to the 1970s.
Build an Even More Satisfying Menu
Last, use your early findings to identify new leads. If you were researching for a Superfund case and found a Wall Street Journal company profile from 1956 that referenced a contract for missile components to be made at the site you’re interested in, try to identify and learn more about who in the DoD let the contract or oversaw product development, production, and testing and created other records that may be accessible by other means. The article might mention an office or command whose obsolete yet pertinent waste disposal regulations may also be available on-line. Or, taken together, this on-line documentation may suggest that you could go after paper records of the same unit, held at the National Archives or a federal library.
There are limits to any on-line research-it’s not all up on the Web and it probably never will be-but conscious and creative consumption of the on-line feast can lead to a very healthy body of research results.
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