Methods and Process
Where it all started...
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During the Spring of 2020, Julia Lucas, a former student, saw on Facebook that someone was selling old letters. She met with the seller in the parking lot of the Christiansburg Burger King. She purchased two collections: The Miss Lydia collection, which was archived by a previous class, and the Walmer-Reed collection.
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Creating the Collection...
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The first step in developing the collection was to organize them, creating an inventory for the documents. Each student was assigned their own documents to organize, and later in the process, fully transcribe. The documents were organized by the type of document; the number of pages; who it was from and who it was to; the destination of the letter; and when it was written. For example:
Envelope and Letter; 1 page; From Harry to Mrs. Clara L. Walmer; Hummelstown, Dauphin Co. Penna; July 5th 1871.
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The next step was to digitize the documents. We used the Radford University History Department's Epson Expression 11000XL flatbed scanner to digitize the documents. The documents were scanned with a black background to ensure they were clearly visible. The digitized documents were then edited to be more visually appealing. The primary edit made was to crop and rotate the images without removing any context from the documents.
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After scanning the documents we began fully transcribing each document in a line by line format. We initially chose a line by line format to keep the transcriptions true to the authors original meaning. Each student fully transcribed their assigned documents at home, then during class they were peer reviewed to ensure accuracy. As the documents were peer reviewed, footnotes were added to explain any names, places, miss-spellings, or phrases within the documents. After the initial transcription two more copies were created with different formats. The first copy remained the same as the original transcription, with the exception that the footnotes were removed. The second copy was in a letter format. Part of the letter format was to add periods where the author had left them out. We decided to only add periods and no other punctuation to make sure we did not change the original meaning of the letters.
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Along with working with the documents themselves, research was done on the many people within and related to the letters. A large portion of research was performed on ancestry.com. Ancestry allowed us to have access to numerous records. Census data, military records, and death certificates.
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With the information collected we developed our final product using Wix as the primary page for the virtual exhibit. Along with Wix, the transcriptions and virtual map were done in ArcGIS StoryMaps. Along with the virtual exhibit a printed "book" will be created cataloging all the information collected on the Walmer-Reed collection. The documents themselves have been catalogued and placed in an archival box as an example for future classes.
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