Throughout the spring semester, USD Digital Humanities Librarian Lindsey Peterson has hosted several primary source workshops for K-12 students. She visited Flandreau High School to speak to history, government, and economics students about the importance of archival research to their studies and future careers. Working with six class sessions of students, they workshopped how to identify tertiary, secondary, and primary resources and locate primary sources in digital and physical archives, like USD’s Archives and Special Collections and the South Dakota Oral History Center. They also discussed how to evaluate the benefits and limitations of historical documents, place them in context, and identify perspectives found within sources.
In collaboration with Iowa’s National History Day program and the Iowa State Historical Society, Peterson also worked with middle school students from central Iowa schools to develop methods for critically analyzing primary sources and including them into their National History Day research. Using a sample thesis statement about the American Civil War as a turning point in history, students used the Emancipation Proclamation, Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the 1866 Cherokee Nation’s treaty with the U.S. government, and nine letters from the Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project to critique the limitations of their test thesis. Students incorporated a variety of perspectives and experiences—including letters authored by former slaveholding men and women, Mississippi Unionists, freedmen, and officials from Mississippi’s state penitentiary system—to craft a far richer, more complicated history about emancipation. The primary source evaluation and argument revision skills they practiced today will benefit them as they develop their projects on turning points in history for National History Day.
Finally, she delivered a guest lecture and ran a workshop in March with the New York Historical Society’s Student Historian Internship program. High school students transcribed CWRGM documents and discussed the importance and challenges of editing historical documents for born digital editions. Then Peterson introduced students to the workflows and components of scholarly digital editions like CWRGM, and they discussed importance of increasing digital access to cultural heritage materials, like nineteenth century governors’ records, and the challenges they can present.
