Academic Research Projects
“Digital Historiography”
Independent Study Project: Digital Historiography (Peter Shapinsky, Fall 2012)
I developed and created an independent study course on paleography and digital historiography. By transcribing historical documents from the late-nineteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century every day, writing daily reflections on my progress, and studying John Jenkin’s book, The Art of Writing, Reduced to a Plain and Easy System: On a Plan Entirely New, in Seven Books, published in 1813, I improved my ability to read historical handwriting. In addition, I wrote an annotated bibliography on paleography, material culture of paper, papermaking, ink, memory studies, digital historiography, and digital preservation. Utilizing my daily reflections, I created a mini-transcription handbook of the letters, numbers, and words that proved most troublesome for me to use while conducting primary research. Furthermore, I examined how the scholarly journal, The American Archivist, changed since its first issue in 1938 to chart the growth of the archives field in the United States of America since the early twentieth century. Furthermore, I examined how the archives field in the United States of America changed since the early twentieth century by analyzing the change in scholarship, methodology, and content in The American Archivist from its first issue published in 1938 to the present.
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