Gary Stanton at UMW has provided some quite useful transliterations of the Mutual Assurance Society policies. He has also provided census tabulations and similar materials that were undoubtedly a hard slog to sit down and type into a spreadsheet. These are invaluable for comparative purposes. But they're for parts of two counties. Naturally, I'm working in the under-represented county. Other parts of census tabulations were not digitized, nor were Land Tax Records so it's not really possible to get to grips with the data when the recording data headings for 1860 are slanted in such particularistic directions.
These are the basic data sets that need digitizing as they have wide-spread applicability and open up areas of investigation that are now effectively walled off.
I agree totally with Kevin on the lumpy parts and on the dearth of post-Civil War materials. VA History seems to have stopped in 1865. Several of my projects have taken me from 1865 to 2010 with the mechanization of agriculture (that being the invention date of the sweet potato picker as one of the last mechanized harvesters). At one level there's a lot of info, but when trying to work out metrically who's a poor person versus a lower middle class person, data mining from original data is all that I've found, hence my plea for getting data digitized.
Lyle Browning
On Aug 28, 2014, at 1:59 PM, "Hardwick, Kevin R - hardwikr" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> John--
>
> Great stuff--very, very useful. Keep it coming!
>
> Two thoughts, I hope constructive, in no especial order:
>
> For those of us who teach Virginia History, there is a real lumpiness to the available sources--lots of good things to teach for some periods, much, much less for others. Post-Civil War materials are especially welcome. I would love to see greater attention to the 20th century, for which we have rich materials for only a handful of themes (eg. Civil Rights, for quite understandable reasons).
>
> For some themes, the problem is the reverse--too much richness, which makes access for non-specialists daunting. Brief editorial apparatus, of the kind provided say by Jack Greene in his anthologies Colony to Nation and Settlement to Society, or by Warren Billings in his excellent 17th century Virginia anthology, are very helpful. I may or may not be idiosyncratic here, so I would be curious how others respond.
>
> All best wishes,
> Kevin R. Hardwick
> James Madison University
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Aug 28, 2014, at 1:27 PM, "Deal, John (LVA)" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
> Regarding the selection of documents, most of these were chosen because they were already part of an ongoing project at the LVA with a built-in demographic. Transcribing the CW150 documents can re-engage the communities where these documents were originally scanned. The Gabriel's Conspiracy items were part of a HistoryPin tour and panel discussion which was well-attended and generated a lot of interest. African American Narrative is a new project which we hope will make genealogical resources searchable and accessible in new ways. In the future, the content which is up for transcription will be driven by LVA programming, public interest, but also with a keen eye towards what has the most research value. Any suggestions for documents to be transcribed can be sent to [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>. Making History is a collaborative effort, so please send us your feedback!
>
>
>
> On the review process:
>
>
>
> * First, the document is transcribed and reviewed by the public on Making History: Transcribe. As noted by many previous crowdsourcing initiatives, the crowd tends to self-correct and yields surprisingly accurate information.
>
> * Several of our staff members have also registered on the transcription site. They give the fully transcribed pages another view, make corrections, and mark them as "Complete."
>
> * From there, we export the transcription and all the metadata.
>
> * Another staff member proofreads the transcription a final time at this stage, preferably one with subject area and/or handwriting expertise.
>
> * It is then converted into a text searchable PDF and attached to the digital item in our repository (Digitool)
>
>
>
> Of course, since the site has only just launched, we will be making improvements and streamlining the process over the next few months. Once we have a more detailed view of the entire process, I will likely write a follow-up blog post on Out Of The Box (http://www.virginiamemory.com/blogs/out_of_the_box/2014/08/19/come-on-make-some-history/)
>
>
>
>
> Sonya Coleman
> Digital Collections Specialist
> Library of Virginia
>
>
>
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