2018 Graduate Research Associates

Overview

The Kentucky Historical Society seeks two Graduate Research Associates (GRAs) familiar with 19th century United States history to write short informational entries for the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition (CWGK). GRAs will receive a stipend of $5,000 each and can work remotely from their home institutions.

Each GRA will annotate 150 assigned documents. Each GRA must be a graduate student in at least the second year of a M.A. program in history or a related humanities discipline. These positions are funded by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), a branch of the National Archives. This continues a successful program begun with eight GRAs in the 2016-17 academic year.

CWGK is an annotated, searchable, and freely-accessible online edition of documents associated with the chief executives of the commonwealth, 1860-1865. Yet CWGK is not solely about the five governors; it is about reconstructing the lost lives and voices of tens of thousands of Kentuckians who interacted with the office of the governor during the war years. CWGK will identify, research, and link together every person, place, and organization found in its documents. This web of hundreds of thousands of networked nodes will dramatically expand the number of actors in Kentucky and U.S. history, show scholars new patterns and hidden relationships, and recognize the humanity and agency of historically marginalized people. To see the project’s work to date, visit discovery.civilwargovernors.org.

Scope of Work

Each GRA will be responsible for researching and writing short entries on named persons, places, organizations, and geographical features in 150 documents. Each document contains an average of fifteen such entities. This work will be completed and submitted to CWGK for fact-checking before December 1, 2018.

Research and writing will proceed according to project guidelines concerning research sources and methods, editorial information desired, and adherence to house style. This will ensure 1) that due diligence is done to the research of each entity and 2) that information is recorded for each item in uniform ways which are easy to encode and search.

All research for the entries must be based in primary or credible secondary sources, and each GRA is expected to keep a virtual research file with notes and digital images of documents related to each entry. These will be examined regularly by the CWGK team as they fact check the GRA output and turned over to CWGK at the completion of the work. CWGK will fact-check all entries for research quality and adherence to house style. CWGK projects an average rate of one document annotated per two hours of work. Each GRA may expect to devote approximately 300 hours to the research—though the actual investment of time may vary.

Each GRA will work remotely. Interaction with the documents and the writing of annotations will take place in a web-based annotation tool developed for CWGK, which can be dialed into from any location. CWGK will make use of online research databases to make its work efficient and uniform. Other archival sources may be of value but are not required by the research guidelines. Securing access to the paid databases required by CWGK (Ancestry.com, Fold3.com, and ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Louisville Courier Journal) is the responsibility of the GRA. If regular institutional access to these databases is not available to the GRA through a university or library, it is the responsibility of the GRA to purchase and use a subscription to these databases. KHS will not reimburse the GRA for any travel, copying, or other expenses incurred in CWGK research.

In order to maintain quality and consistency as well as to foster a collegial and collaborative work culture, CWGK will conduct weekly virtual “office hours” via Google Hangouts, during which GRAs are required to dial in, ask questions of staff, share expertise and research methods, and make connections with their peers. Virtual attendance at these office hours is mandatory, and multiple sessions may be offered to accommodate schedules.

The Kentucky Historical Society will hold copyright for all annotation research as work for hire.

Evaluation Criteria

A proposal should consist of at least a narrative statement of professional ability in the form of a cover letter, a CV, and two letters of recommendation. Additional supplementary materials that demonstrate capacity in the evaluation factors may also be included.

Proposal materials should be submitted to Tony Curtis at tony.curtis@ky.gov by no later than February 15, 2018. Any questions about the GRA program may be directed to Curtis as well.

The Kentucky Historical Society will evaluate the proposals based on the following factors:

Research Experience (70 points): Describe your familiarity with research in 19th century U.S. history. Describe some projects you have undertaken. What sources have you used? Have you been published? Have you interpreted historical research in forms other than a scholarly peer-reviewed publication? How does the proposed research project differ from those you have undertaken in the past? Describe your familiarity with the strengths and weaknesses of online research databases such as Ancestry.com, Fold3.com, ProQuest, and Google Books.

Project Experience (30 points): Describe any work you have done in the editing of historical documents. Discuss how a project such as CWGK maintains balance between thorough research and production schedules. Have you worked on other collaborative projects in the field of history or otherwise? Describe your ability to meet deadlines and regulate workflow. Describe your understanding of and/or experience with the Digital Humanities. From what you know of the CWGK project, how does it fit with current trends in the field? What do you hope to gain from working on the CWGK project?

CWGK Welcomes Natalie C. Smith

The Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition (CWGK) is pleased to announce the addition of Natalie C. Smith to the project’s editorial staff.

Smith’s position is funded by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and is focused on preparing both texts and annotations for publication in the newly expanded CWGK web interface.

Smith brings skills in publishing, textual editing, and digital database research from her work on a Master of Letters in Romantic and Victorian English literature from the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Most recently, Smith has served as a program assistant for the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, where she was involved in civics educational outreach and gained archival experience working at the center’s Mitch McConnell and Elaine L. Chao Archives.

Smith’s academic and professional work has placed her at the center of collections management, digital research and publication, and creative public outreach within the Commonwealth. These linked missions lay at the heart of CWGK, and allow the project to play a dynamic role in the life of the Kentucky Historical Society and national organizations such as the Association for Documentary Editing. “Academic research today is fundamentally different than it once was,” Smith says, “and the expansion of digital humanities responds to the ever-constant cry that the humanities are in crisis.” Smith will add momentum to CWGK’s ongoing efforts to address that crisis on multiple fronts. “Together with my work coordinating professional development opportunities with Kentucky social studies teachers, my passion for making Kentucky history more accessible to the public has grown.”

“I desire to give back to my home state of Kentucky,” the Elizabethtown native and University of Louisville alum concludes. CWGK and KHS are excited to afford new opportunities for Natalie to do so.

New CWGK Document Brings KHS Staff Together

It’s always nice when CWGK documents walk right into our office! While going through old family papers, KHS Head of Reference Services Cheri Daniels found an 1865 land grant to one of her ancestors, Matthew Pace, signed by Governor Thomas E. Bramlette. Land grants such as these are particularly difficult for CWGK to track down because they move administratively from the County Courts briefly to the executive department in Frankfort, and then back into the hands of the grantee. Documents like this one, in short, will likely have to come to CWGK via family holdings like Cheri’s.

As the CWGK staff got out the scanners, the story really took off. Register of the Kentucky Historical Society Associate Editor Stephanie Lang noticed the name of one of her Floyd County ancestors, William J. May, on the grant. KHS’s library collections came to the rescue, and the team quickly pulled maps of Floyd and Magoffin counties to locate the specific plot of land granted in this newly accessioned CWGK document.

Will this document change the way we understand the Civil War era in Eastern Kentucky? Perhaps not. But it does underscore the importance of every document in the CWGK corpus. Each document contains a link to the lives and stories of everyday people from across the Commonwealth and the globe. And bringing these documents together in digital public space allows CWGK researchers to make connections between one another in the context of our shared past.

Look forward to the digital debut of the Matthew Pace collection soon at Discovery.CivilWarGovernors.org!

CWGK on Papers of Abraham Lincoln Review & Planning Team

Civil War Governors of Kentucky project director Patrick Lewis joins a world-class group of scholars and editors on the Papers of Abraham Lincoln Review and Planning Team. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum convened the team to assess over 15 years of editorial work on the Papers of Abraham Lincoln and to consult on digital platforms to publish images, transcriptions, and annotations of documents from throughout Lincoln’s life.

In addition to Lewis, other members of the Review and Planning Team include:

  • Daniel Feller, director of the Papers of Andrew Jackson project at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville
  • Susan Perdue, director of the Documents Compass program at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
  • Matthew Pinsker, director of Dickinson College’s House Divided Project
  • Jennifer Stertzer, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Digital Editing and senior editor for the Papers of George Washington Digital Edition

These projects represent the cutting edge in documentary editing and digital history. The inclusion of CWGK among them is a testament to the importance of the work this project has done since it organized in 2010. In addition to delivering a new perspective on the Civil War to teachers, students, and researchers across the Commonwealth and the United States, CWGK has earned a seat at the table for important discussions about where the history field will go in the twenty-first century.

Read more about the Review and Planning Team in the State Journal-Register

“These folks that were brought in have worked on different projects around the country, and have many years of experience in different areas,” Lowe said. “They’re all quite skilled in documentary editing and understand that world.”

The Papers of Abraham Lincoln project began in 1985 as the Lincoln Legal Papers Project, dedicated to finding all surviving records from Lincoln’s legal career. When that work was finished, the mission was expanded in 2000 to finding all Lincoln documents and putting them into a digital format.

SHA Graduate Council Features CWGK & Public History

Civil War Governors of Kentucky project director Patrick Lewis and Kentucky Historical Society colleague Mandy Higgins led a #TuesdayTakeover of the Southern Historical Association’s Graduate Council Twitter feed on February 14, 2017.

The SHA Grad Council invites historians to share career advice with emerging professionals in graduate programs across the United States. Lewis and Higgins live tweeted their work day and used their activities to offer tips and advice on managing public history careers, digital history startup and sustainability, and the transferability of graduate skills into the public history workplace.

Preview the day’s advice below, and see the full recap here:

Civil War Governors of Kentucky Editor Hosts Webinar for Kentucky’s Librarians and Archivists

Civil War Governors of Kentucky (CWGK) assistant editor Tony Curtis hosted a webinar on October 14, 2016 entitled “Researching the Civil War Governors of Kentucky” for Kentucky’s librarians and archivists as a part of the Continuing Education program offered through the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives (KDLA). The webinar focused on the launch of “Early Access“–the first stage of accessibility–in June 2016, allowing users to browse and keyword search over 10,000 documents.

The next step–“Annotation Beta”–is to deliver approximately 1,500 documents, annotated and set within dense social and geographic networks through NHPRC funding. The presentation demonstrated how CWGK will shape the ways researchers, students, and teachers will explore the past in the future.

Click HERE to listen to the webinar.

Voices of the Filson Interview on WXOX 97.1FM (Louisville, Ky.)

Listen to Civil War Governors of Kentucky assistant editor Tony Curtis as he returns to the Filson Historical Society archives to discuss the project and its future plans about annotation and social networking on an episode of the Voices of the Filson on WXOX 97.1 FM with the Filson’s own associate curator of collections Aaron Rosenblum.

Audio provided by Voices of the Filson on WXOX 97.1FM and the Filson Historical Society.

The Rogue Historian Podcast

Listen to #CWGK project director Patrick Lewis discuss the project on an episode of The Rogue Historian with Keith Harris.

We discuss:

  • Digital history and how it is useful
  • A historical “social network” being developed through CWGK annotation
  • The place in digital humanities for early career historians
  • How to use the documentary project’s user guides

Listen to the episode here

rogue

Graduate Research Associates 2016-17

Overview

The Kentucky Historical Society seeks eight Graduate Research Associates (GRAs) familiar with 19th century United States history to write short informational entries for the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition (CWG-K). GRAs will receive a stipend of $5,000 each and can work remotely from their home institutions.

Each GRA will annotate 150 assigned documents each. Each GRA must be a graduate student in at least the second year of a M.A. program in history or a related humanities discipline. In accordance with its commitment to facilitating relationships between history practitioners and organizations in Kentucky and nationally, KHS hopes that these GRA positions will help advance the professional skills of early-career historians in Kentucky and elsewhere. Preference will be given to candidates who are enrolled in graduate programs in history at Kentucky universities, though applicants worldwide are encouraged to apply. These positions are funded by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), a branch of the National Archives.

CWG-K is an annotated, searchable, and freely-accessible online edition of documents associated with the chief executives of the commonwealth, 1860-1865. Yet CWG-K is not solely about the five governors; it is about reconstructing the lost lives and voices of tens of thousands of Kentuckians who interacted with the office of the governor during the war years. CWG-K will identify, research, and link together every person, place, and organization found in its documents. This web of hundreds of thousands of networked nodes will dramatically expand the number of actors in Kentucky and U.S. history, show scholars new patterns and hidden relationships, and recognize the humanity and agency of historically marginalized people. To see the project’s work to date, visit discovery.civilwargovernors.org.

Scope of Work

Each GRA will be responsible for researching and writing short entries on named persons, places, organizations, and geographical features in 150 documents. Each document contains an average of fifteen such entities. This work will be completed and submitted to CWG-K for fact-checking before June 30, 2017.

Research and writing will proceed according to project guidelines concerning research sources and methods, editorial information desired, and adherence house style. This will ensure 1) that due diligence is done to the research of each entity and 2) that information is recorded for each item in uniform ways which are easy to encode and search.

All research for the entries must be based in primary or credible secondary sources, and each GRA is expected to keep a virtual research file with notes and digital images of documents related to each entry. These will be turned over to CWG-K at the completion of the work. CWG-K will fact-check all entries for research quality and adherence to house style. CWG-K projects an average rate of one document annotated per two hours of work. Each GRA may expect to devote approximately 300 hours to the research—though the actual investment of time may vary.

Each GRA will work remotely. Interaction with the documents and the writing of annotations will take place in a web-based annotation tool developed for CWG-K, which can be dialed into from any location. CWG-K will make use of online research databases to make its work efficient and uniform. Other archival sources may be of value but are not required by the research guidelines. Securing access to the paid databases required by CWG-K (Ancestry.com, Fold3.com, and ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Louisville Courier Journal) is the responsibility of the GRA. If regular institutional access to these databases is not available to the GRA through a university or library, it is the responsibility of the GRA to purchase and use a subscription to these databases. KHS will not reimburse the GRA for any travel, copying, or other expenses incurred in CWG-K research.

In order to maintain quality and consistency as well as to foster a collegial and collaborative work culture, CWG-K will conduct weekly virtual “office hours” via Google Hangouts, during which GRAs are required to dial in, ask questions of staff, share expertise and research methods, and make connections with their peers at other universities. Virtual attendance at these office hours is mandatory, and multiple sessions may be offered to accommodate schedules.

The Kentucky Historical Society will hold copyright for all annotation research as work for hire.

Evaluation Criteria

A proposal should consist of at least a narrative statement of professional ability in the form of a cover letter, a CV, and two letters of recommendation. Additional supplementary materials that demonstrate capacity in the evaluation factors may also be included. Applications are due by September 16, 2016 to Tony Curtis, tony.curtis@ky.gov.

The Kentucky Historical Society will evaluate the proposals based on the following factors:

Research Experience (70 points): Describe your familiarity with research in 19th century U.S. history. Describe some projects you have undertaken. What sources have you used? Have you been published? Have you interpreted historical research in forms other than a scholarly peer-reviewed publication? How does the proposed research project differ from those you have undertaken in the past? Describe your familiarity with the strengths and weaknesses of online research databases such as Ancestry.com, Fold3.com, ProQuest, and Google Books.

Project Experience (30 points): Describe any work you have done in the editing of historical documents. Discuss how a project such as CWG-K maintains balance between thorough research and production schedules. Have you worked on other collaborative projects in the field of history or otherwise? Describe your ability to meet deadlines and regulate workflow. Describe your understanding of and/or experience with the Digital Humanities. From what you know of the CWG-K project, how does it fit with current trends in the field? What do you hope to gain from working on the CWG-K project?

Institutional Affiliation (10 points): Additional points are available to applicants who are enrolled in graduate programs at Kentucky universities. Applicants claiming this status should discuss how they will use this experience to help build and sustain relationships among history organizations across the state and articulate why such relationships are valuable. This does not imply any relationship between KHS and the educational institution.

Civil War Governors Going to England

keele logoPatrick Lewis will take the Civil War Governors of Kentucky (CWG-K) across the Atlantic to the David Bruce Centre for American Studies at Keele University in Staffordshire, England. On October 30, 2015, he will present with leading scholars from the United States, Canada, and the U.K. at the Bruce Centre’s colloquium on the Civil War and Slavery. He was interviewed by the Insider, the KHS staff magazine.

For updates on the trip, follow Patrick @KyPLewis and #CWGK

Q: What makes this opportunity at Keele special?
A: A couple of things. First, it allows KHS to demonstrate what our staff already knows; we are doing world class work here and our emphasis on digital dissemination of our collections, our resources and our scholarship means that Kentucky history will be front and center as students, teachers and researchers across the world write the next generation of history and use Kentucky lessons to address worldwide challenges.

But this isn’t just about KHS making connections to international institutions. This colloquium highlights how the quality of KHS programs feeds off of and mutually benefits each other. The event is being organized by two-time KHS Scholarly Research Fellow Laura Sandy. A few years ago, Laura came to do work on so-called “slave stealing” abolitionists in the antebellum era. We at CWG-K knew that our project would have wonderful material for her to extend that study into the war years, but we weren’t far enough along to let her access anything.

When Laura came back this summer, that had changed. She spent weeks combing through our nearly 12,000 transcribed documents and took home a massive haul of primary sources for herself, her graduate students, and her classroom. Laura was putting together the program for the colloquium while she was in Kentucky and insisted that we come to share CWG-K with American historians working in the U.K.

This opportunity to show the power of CWG-K to an international audience would never have been possible if KHS hadn’t built a relationship with Laura through the fellowship program. Our quality work across the organization helps us build a reputation for excellence, launch new programs and find new constituents in unexpected places.

Q: Why is a project like Civil War Governors important for international scholars?
A: Access. Laura knows firsthand how difficult it can be to find research travel funds. The financial barrier to conducting original research is huge for domestic scholars, but it is unbelievable for those across an ocean. CWG-K will break down those barriers by providing free digital access to documents from archives in Kentucky and across the United States. For the people at this colloquium, CWG-K is a lifeline for teaching and research material that will sustain American history programs in the U.K.

But this question of access is just as important here in Kentucky as it is in England. For students and teachers in rural counties who can’t afford to travel or purchase historical database subscriptions, CWG-K provides them free access to world class content that fits their curricular needs and is set in their home towns.

Access is why CWG-K is such a great KHS project. It gives back to our Kentucky communities while it simultaneously faces outward and shows the best of the Commonwealth to the world.

Q: So, with CWG-K going online soon, why do scholars like Laura even need to come to KHS anymore?
A: Simple, for every question that CWG-K will help researchers answer, it will raise many more. CWG-K couldn’t be a better advertisement for doing historical work in Kentucky and on Kentucky topics. Say a student uses CWG-K to write a short seminar paper; as they look to expand that germ of an idea into a thesis or dissertation, they seek out KHS collections and apply for KHS fellowships to broaden their source base and confirm the initial findings they made using our database. They find more resources in our online catalog and digital collections, make a list of relevant artifacts in the object catalog, tap KHS staff connections to find related content in Lexington and Louisville, spin off a chapter for publication in the Register, and serve as panelists for a public symposium we host.

CWG-K will be yet another access point that establishes relationships between KHS and history professionals. And KHS has an excellent habit of developing those relationships into really productive partnerships that touch on every part of KHS and benefit all of our constituent groups.