This fall, the University Libraries partnered with Mississippi State University and the University of Southern Mississippi on the Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi digital documentary edition (CWRGM). With federal funding, CWRGM is digitizing, transcribing, and annotating 20,000 documents sent to Mississippi’s Governors’ offices during the American Civil War and Reconstruction (late-1859–1878). USD Digital Humanities Librarian, Dr. Lindsey R. Peterson, is co-directing the project and overseeing a team of five USD undergraduate and graduate students employed by the project with funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
Employment with CWRGM is bringing valuable editing, research, and digital humanities skills to the University’s students. Using FromthePage’s transcription software, USD students are transcribing the original documents and adding enhanced subject tag features, which allow users to link together all documents containing that term. These subject tags also help contextualize the documents with reparative terminology, explanative annotations, and further resources. Undergraduate students Matt Hoff (History education major), Elizabeth Boysen (History education major), and Blake Pottebaum (English and History major) joined the transcription and tagging team and have helped make over 10,000 documents available at the website. Fellow USD students, Nick Kennedy (Native American Studies and History major) and Mariah Cosens (History master’s student), are working with the CWRGM annotation team to help clarify the documents for site users. Rooted in primary and secondary source research, Kennedy and Cosens are writing contextual annotations for CWRGM’s massive collection of subject tags, and Kennedy is decolonizing subject tags directly relating to Native American history by incorporating indigenous languages and perspectives into the project’s protocols and practices.
The documents the University Libraries and USD students are helping make freely available online to students, educators, genealogists, and researchers are an invaluable resource for studying the Civil War and Reconstruction era and are vital to enhancing student learning and professional development. To learn more about the project, visit cwrgm.org.
Written by Lindsey R. Peterson, Digital Humanities Librarian
