HISTORY CONTRACT

Revised HISTORY CONTRACT, as of 3/20/2020

Mission Statement

The purpose of this project is to work with the National Park Service to digitize the 274 letters from Civil War Sergeant (Corporal) Jerome Peirce and make them available in a website that explores the letters and Peirce’s life during the Civil War. We will do our absolute best to digitize the letters in the highest quality scans and organize them in an appropriate manner. We will create a website that will function as a mix between an archive and an educational resource. This website is intended to be used by academics and hobbyists who are interested in learning about the topic.

Tools Planned to Be Used

Throughout the project, we will be using EPSON scanners to digitize the letters and put them on a secure removable hard drive in the digital archive at the end of the day. We will create a website using Omeka to display the Sgt. (Cpl.) Peirce letters as well as to educate about the life of Sgt. (Cpl.) Peirce. In the website we want to include a timeline (created using Timeline JS) and a StoryMap that explores the life of Jerome Peirce from his beginning of his military career to his untimely death in 1864. We will upload the scanned letters and transcripts on to Omeka database and organize the information in an accessible and coordinated manner.

URL for the website

Link: peirceletters.umwhistory.org

Outline for our website

- Homepage: includes pictures from the collection and a short biography on the life of Jerome Peirce
- Timeline: Timeline following the military career of Peirce, this will serve as a more in depth biography about Jerome Peirce (Leaving comment as warning)
- Map: Storymap following selected letters / adding a link to letters for the location
- War Years Letter Archive: this will house the known/war year letters collection in chronological order with a tag feature that will allow viewers to search for specific letters (tags include: location, written by, written to, date) (brainstorm ideas for potential content based tags but we want to make sure that we produced the other content first). Letters will have PDFs of the scans along with the transcripts (a PDF and directly on the page) for easy download and/or export
- Miscellaneous Letter Archive: Miscellaneous letters aren’t missing any data but they are not within the timeframe of the main collection. This tab will have the miscellaneous letters that are part of the collection (tags include: themes and content based tags). Letters will have PDFs of the scans along with the transcripts (a PDF and directly on the page) for easy download and/or export. Depending on what we get to with the war year letters, this will determine if we get to the Miscellaneous Archive

Unknown Letter Archive: Unknown letters had fragments or limited information about the letter themselves. Letters will have PDFs of the scans along with the transcripts (a PDF and directly on the page) for easy download and/or export. We are going to do the best that we can to create tags for these letters considering that we have limited information about the letters in this collection. Depending on what we get to with the war year letters, this will determine if we get to the Unknown Archive

About: This page will detail who we are, why this website was made, all contributors, mission statement

Mission Accomplishments

- February: most of the letters are scanned and the Omeka website should be created while work on the timeline and StoryMap should begin.
  - week of February 3: letters 1-50 should be scanned
  - week of February 10: letters 51-100 should be scanned
  - week of February 17: letters 101-170 should be scanned while work on timeline and StoryMap should start
  - week of February 24: letters 171-220 and the basic structure of the Omeka website should be installed
- March: the StoryMap, timeline, and all the letters should be uploaded onto the Omeka website and be in the process of finalization.
  - week of March 2: spring break / working on site
  - week of March 9: rest of the letters should be finished scanning and uploaded on site with appropriate metadata / brainstorm ideas for potential content based tags would be thought of by this week
  - week of March 16: Plan out the site and how we want to tackle it. Different plugins and other stuff like that
  - week of March 23: StoryMap and Timeline is due by the end of the week / Outlines for the site will be planned out this week for the letter organization and other pages on the site.
  - week of March 30: everything is being worked on the website and will be completed in a timely manner within the next couple of weeks
- April: Everything on the website should be finished and any final thoughts/edits that we feel like we need to do
  - week of April 6: Website should be done by then and make any final thoughts/edits about the project
  - week of April 13: final edits before project is due
  - week of April 20: Project is due on the 21st, Symposium (24th) / won’t know if that will happen or not at this point

April 27th: Final day of class

Role Assignments

Everyone SCANS and everyone HELPS each other (there are no small parts and everything is flexible when needed)
To-Do List:
- Creating StoryMap (Anna and Hunter)
- Creating historical timeline (Dennis and Erin)
- Learn about how to use Omeka (talk to Angie (Accessibility Options))
- Everyone’s responsibilities
  - Uploading digitized letters and transcripts to website
    - Organizing them appropriately such as dates, locations, and names (See outline of website)
    - Adding appropriate metadata (written by, written to, date written, place written, etc.)
    - Each letter will be an item
  - Organizing the website (creating pages, etc. (See outline of website))
  - Creating other ideas/features for the site (content tags (potentially), comments, etc.)
  - Editing the website (proofreading, checking work, etc.)
    - Accessibility Options (everyone will work on this part when we are designing the website)
      - Color Contrast (Colour Contrast Analyser), Alternative Text (Dublin Core), Audio (Potentially), Screen Reader (NV Access)
  - Links to where all the letters and transcripts on the Omeka site (PDFs and TIFF Files)

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Original Contract