Professional Development Call: Dr. Lauranett Lee
Professional Development: December 11, 2012
Virginia Historical Society - Richmond, VA
Staff Members
Dr. Lauranett Lee is the curator of African American
History at the Virginia Historical Society. Her research interests include 19th
century American history, slavery and genealogy. She spearheaded the Unknown No Longer project. Dr. Lee has
her terminal degree in history and taught college courses before joining
the Virginia Historical Society. Paige Newman
is an assistant archivist at the Virginia Historical Society. Paige volunteered at the Virginia Historical Society before becoming a full time
staff member. Both Paige and Dr. Lee agree that Virginia is a great place for
archivists because of its rich history. Along with five interns, two
volunteers, and Meg, the digitization specialist, the Unknown No Longer came into existence.
Virginia
Historical Society
Virginia was the largest slave holding state in the
union. The Virginia Historical Society was established in 1831, around the Nat
Turner slave revolt. As a result, many of the slave records were not included or
destroyed. In spite of that attempt to repress historical information, VHS has
an abundance of slave holding records.
Unknown No Longer
Unknown No Longer
is a free, online, database that lists the names of 10,000 slaves. Researchers
can enter the first name, last name or plantation name of a slave and anything
that the Virginia Historical Society has, located within their collections will
pop up. Most of the names that have been found so far were located in the
personal papers collections at the Virginia Historical Society. They considered
open source software for the database platform but they did not feel confident
that their data would be secure. This is
why they chose Helium as the company that would help them to design the
database. Other companies that they consulted with are mentioned in the related
resources tab. The Virginia Historical Society is still looking for funding to
increase the utility of the database. Since there are over 8.5 million items in
the Virginia Historical Society and an estimated 500,000 slaves in Virginia,
there is still a great deal of work to be done.
Processing
Workflows
The processing staff reads through correspondence, wills
and deeds to discover the names. Dr. Lee spent most of her time weeding through
lists; while Paige extracted names from more complex documents. The Library of
Virginia has similar records as the Virginia Historical Society but they try
not to digitize their materials in order to keep the database autonomous. The
team is more interested in cleaning up the data that they have rather than growing
without quality. They try to improve entries by researching multiple
collections and indicate any uncertain names with brackets. The Virginia
Historical Society has tried to incorporate volunteers into their workflow; without much success
Users
Most of the people who use the database are searching for
their ancestors. The users communicate with each other and the staff on the
message boards and there is usually a spike in usage after a media release.
Outreach
On account of the generous grant from Dominion Power, the
staff of the Unknown No Longer
project can take their show on the road. They have great relationships with
public libraries, historical societies, and genealogy groups. Their interactions
with the community allow descendants of slaves and slave owners to see their
history in a different context. The staff has also presented Unknown No Longer in sessions for the
Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives. Dr. Lee’s placement on various boards and
commissions also allow for a greater dissemination of the resources of the
Virginia Historical Society.
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