Clio Wired (History 696)

The author’s main goal was to index this firsthand material so that it can be searched more thoroughly than ever before. Most importantly, in a digital format, the materials can be organized with multiple threads, so that the reader can quickly go to just the materials that interest her. You can also view multiple perspectives on the same event.

The interface is relatively easy to use. The database is “browsable” by author, contents, source, year, place, personal event (death of a child), or historical event (assassination of JFK). You can “find” source works and authors or you can “Search” the actual text of the letters and diaries. There is also a “showcase” that highlights items of “lay interest,” which are actually pretty interesting, especially Julia Heller’s Boyfriend Book from 1932.

Oddly, the guided tour of the database didn’t work. There is a new users guide that you can download in MS Word format, which struck me as pretty stupid—the document has links in it, so you’re just dodging back and forth from Word to Web; just suck it up and read the file online.

Database entries are documented like a bibliographic entry:

Heller, Julia, Diary of Julia Heller, June, 1932 in Julia Heller Boy Friends Book, June 1932. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2001, pp. 50. [Bibliographic Details] [6-13-1932] S3268-D001

Clicking on the document will take you to a text version of the document, with links to the manuscript images. Clicking on the bibliographic details will give you the author’s birth date, place of birth, religion, occupation, marital and maternal status when writing, etc. plus links to their other documents in the database

Some of the authors have biographies presented for them, which are especially helpful in placing their writings in context. I wish that all authors had the same amount of info. available.

A database such as this will be extremely useful for my proposed dissertation topic of the week (I know, I know, it’s almost the end of the semester; I should have this cemented by now… although I’m pretty sure this is what it’s going to be…). This has actually been a pet project of mine since I was an undergrad at Gettysburg College. I want to look at Gettysburg College women during World War II—most of the men went off to the war and so the campus was primarily female. The girls took over the boys’ frat houses and activities and basically ran the campus. This phenomenon is interesting to me because many people point to women entering the workforce during WWII as the start of the women’s movement; perhaps the starting point could also be drawn to these younger women who were gaining these new freedoms and had the opportunity of a liberal education during the War. Special Collections at Gettysburg has a large collection of oral histories, as well as the old yearbooks (one yearbook during the war was designed for the boys overseas and included a photo spread of the campus beauties done by pinup artist George Petty) and campus newspaper articles. Because I’ve been interested in this topic for awhile, I’ve been in contact with the national chapters of the sororities and obtained meeting notes and newsletters. And I am also placing a “Call for Memories” ad in the upcoming alumni magazines in order to hopefully meet with alumna and hopefully have access to their letters/journals/photos/etc.

I am hoping to amass a lot of these primary sources in order to create something of an archive (but one that has a narrative, of course). Unfortunately, no such digital archive exists for my proposed project (which is, obviously, why I will be making one), but let’s pretend that one of the 303 entries associated with World War II that I found by browsing the “Historical Event” search function was written by a Gettysburg College woman.

For example, I would take the diary of Lavinia Riker Davis (which spans 25 years, from 1930-1955) and focus on it as a case study, a la DoHistory.org’s examination of Martha Ballard’s Diary. I could use the Magic Lens as a way to transcribe the messy handwriting that looks much fancier than just a plain old text page. I could examine and point out specific stories and themes in the diary that tie into the larger picture. I could then include an interview with her (both as audio and as transcript), and also include things such as photographs and relevant yearbook pages or newspaper articles to place her in the contextual scene. By amassing all of this information, including her primary sources, I am using her story as a building block in the construction of my argument and presenting a story in a way that cannot be done in print.

I really don’t want to get back into our old arguments, but I really do believe that an archive can have a narrative. I’m not really sure that North American Women’s Letters and Diaries has an overreaching argument or storyline because its purpose is really accessibility and user-friendliness. By choosing documents that all work together to build a larger argument, I think that my digital project proposal ultimately could function both as an archive (of sorts) and as a legitimate study of history.