NAIS 1:2 FALL 2014 Dickinson College Builds Carlisle Indian School Resource Center 149 Notes from the Field MALINDA TRILLER DORAN Dickinson College Builds Carlisle Indian Industrial School Resource Center MORE THAN TEN THOUSAND STUDENTS attended the Carlisle Indian School (CIS) between 1879 and 1918, and each one of them has a story. Over the last century, however , materials documenting the Carlisle experience, including photographs, letters, and the administrative files of the school itself, have been dispersed among various institutions. This scattered historical record makes it a challenge for descendants, scholars, teachers, and students to connect with the lives of the individuals who were affected by the school. The Archives and Special Collections department of Dickinson College has partnered with the College’s Community Studies Center to create a website that will bring together and make freely available these widely dispersed materials. The CIS paper trail currently leads to institutions such as the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; the Cumberland County Historical Society in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and the Special Collections of Dickinson College. Jim Gerencser, college archivist at Dickinson, had long dreamed of building an online resource that would provide convenient access to digital versions of these resources, regardless of their geographic location. In October 2012, more than 290 individuals gathered at Dickinson for the symposium titled “Carlisle, PA: Site of Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations.” The response to this symposium provided the energy necessary to set a digitization project in motion. Gerencser collaborated with Susan Rose, professor of sociology and Community Studies Center director, and Malinda Triller Doran, special collections librarian, to develop a plan for an online Carlisle Indian School Resource Center . In spring 2013, the three project leaders secured funding from an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Digital Humanities grant and Dickinson’s Research and Development Committee. Since that time, they have sent four research teams to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., to scan and photograph records located within the Bureau of Indian Affairs Record Group. These teams have scanned the files of four thousand students, which include items Malinda Triller Doran NAIS 1:2 FALL 2014 150 such as photographs, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and administrative forms documenting the experience of students while they were enrolled at CIS and after they returned to their homes. One member of the research team also photographed twelve bound ledgers that contain entries documenting events such as the arrival and departure of students and their outing assignments. Upon their return to Dickinson, members of the research teams have prepared the digital images for presentation on the project website: http:// carlisleindian.dickinson.edu. As of July 2014, more than 1,775 student files were available online. Members of the project team have also begun transcribing the contents of the ledger volumes to provide the information they contain as searchable and sortable text. Gerencser, Rose, and Triller Doran plan to continue adding resources to the CIS website over a period of several years. Additional research teams will scan and upload the remaining student files and ledgers located at the National Archives in order to provide comprehensive access to those resources. Gerencser has also begun to seek partnerships with other institutions that hold materials related to the CIS, such as the Beinecke Library at Yale University , which holds the papers of Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the CIS, and the U. S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The ultimate goal is to provide a searchable database that will facilitate discovery, whether an individual wishes to search for information about a specific student or explore broader aspects of the CIS experience, such as tribal affiliations or outing assignments. The project leaders also anticipate building interactive capabilities into the site that will allow individuals to contribute photographs, family documents, or oral histories. In addition, they plan to work with both Native and non-Native scholars, teachers, and community members to develop teaching and learning materials utilizing the resource center content. The Carlisle Indian School Resource Center will continue to grow as project staff add new content almost daily. For more information about the project , please contact Jim Gerencser or Malinda Triller Doran in the Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections at...
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