PROPOSAL TYPE
Lightning Round
SEEKING
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
RELATED TOPICS
- Archives
- Data/Information Management
- Digital
ABSTRACT
The Center for Digital History at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon (CDH) proposes a “Lightning Round” styled session to showcase scholarly digital projects around America’s 250th. Scholarly-informed digital humanities projects create meaningful intersections between the work of public historians, librarians, and digital specialists to bring engaging products to a variety of publics.
While many cannot go to historic homes, battlefields, or sites of memory in person, they can engage with exciting digital projects that connect them to the 250th. The digital space provides public historians with opportunities for preservation, collaboration, and outreach that goes beyond the physical footprint of organizations.
DESCRIPTION
The organizations as a part of this “Lightning Round” plan to share a variety of projects and initiatives at their home institutions as a part of semquincentennial programming. These projects range from digital exhibits, relational databases, digitization efforts, transcription projects, and digital collations. The nature of many of these projects are collaborative, emphasizing research sharing.
The CDH will speak to their relaunch of the Database of the Enslaved at Mount Vernon and Washington Day by Day in 2026. WDBD is an ongoing collaboration with the Washington Papers and history courses at several universities to document Washington’s daily activities. They will also share ongoing projects aligned with 250th programming such as the Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington (https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia), George Washington Podcast Network (https://www.georgewashingtonpodcast.com/), and American Revolutionary Geographies Online (ARGO) (https://www.argomaps.org/). Among our panel are ARGO partners, the American Philosophical Society and Osher Map Library. Bayard Miller for the American Philosophical Society will present the Revolutionary City Project (https://therevolutionarycity.org/). This collaborative initiative unites developers, librarians, digital humanists, and educators to broaden access to archival materials and foster civic dialogue through deeper engagement with history. In the lead-up to the 250th, Katie Hatton from the North Carolina Historical Digital Publications Office (MosaicNC) will highlight a variety of untold and underrepresented stories from North Carolina’s revolutionary past. These include The Gourd Patch Conspiracy (https://mosaicnc.org/gourd-patch), about a religious loyalist uprising, In Their Own Words (https://mosaicnc.org/revolutionary-pensions), about NC’s Revolutionary War widows, The Edenton Tea Party Resolves (http://mosaicnc.org/edenton-tea-party), about the U.S.’s first boycott led by women, and Stand Against Slavery (https://mosaicnc.org/enslaved-resistance), about self-emancipation and enslaved resistance in colonial North Carolina. Paul Fuller at Osher Map Library will share their digital offerings around cartography covering over 500 years of history as well as their upcoming project “Founding Memories: America at 250.” This project highlights how the memory and idea of America has been shaped over these 250 years with an attention to anniversary celebrations and local stories from the Revolutionary War. Molly Shaddix and Ashley Spenneberg-Perkins represent the Kentucky Historical Society. They will share a number of digital projects including “Kentucky at 1776” themed around America’s 250.They are using in-person events, social media, and radio spots as outreach.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly:
Zoie Horecny, The George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, [email protected]
All feedback and offers of assistance should be sent by November 15, 2025. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.