The Trials and Errors of Building Prudence Person’s Scrapbook: An Annotated Digital Edition

Abstract

Ashley Reed describes her work with students to create an annotated online edition of a nineteenth-century scrapbook by Prudence Person, a member of a prominent North Carolina family. She outlines the lessons she learned as the project progressed from its first phase in a classroom of nineteen students to an independent study with only two. When the smaller group integrated more field-specific knowledge, the students and the project thrived: they visited historic sites, presented at undergraduate research forums, and took ownership of the content. Reed addresses the difficulties and benefits of launching a context-rich DH project in a general education classroom, and she imagines its future iteration as the centerpiece of an intensive upper-level course on nineteenth-century print culture.