Starting a New Blog

Date of Post

In an effort to share more information about our ongoing progress with the Carlisle Indian Industrial School project, we have decided to launch a blog that will be available on our homepage.

This project began in earnest only 8 months ago, with a team of three making a two-day visit to the U.S. National Archives in Washington, DC to test some workflows with scanners and laptops, and to capture page images from larger ledgers using digital photography. A two-week visit followed in late May and early June, with a research team of four scanning the contents of nearly 2000 student files.

The members of these research teams, along with other interns and project workers, have been processing these scanned documents to make them ready for the website in the months since their initial capture. They have also been transcribing documents to make them searchable, and they have been uploading documents to the project website. Other members of the project team have been working on the website itself, organizing the content and refining the navigation and presentation capabilities. As we develop the website, we've also been grateful to have the input of local subject experts to help us better understand some of the particular needs of this research community.

This project would not be possible without the financial support of a Mellon Foundation Digital Humanities grant, awarded to Dickinson College in 2013, nor without the hard work and input of many individuals. Those who have contributed to the success of the project thus far include the following: Jim Gerencser, Susan Rose, Malinda Triller Doran, Barbara Landis, Dovie Thomason, Cara Holtry Curtis, Ryan Burke, Don Sailer, Kacee Cooke, Pierce Bounds, Caitlin Moriarty, Tessa Cicak, Katie Walters, Frank Vitale, Xueyin Zha, Steven Wang, Stephanie Read, and Michele Metcalf.