Grant for Papers of Abraham Lincoln
Project to find and digitize all Lincoln documents receives grant from Abraham Lincoln Association

 

[December 20, 2018] 

A groundbreaking project at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum to find and digitize documents from the 16th president’s life has been awarded a grant by the Abraham Lincoln Association.

The $6,000 grant will pay for the content-management software the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project uses to track hundreds of thousands of documents, images and notes, said Daniel Worthington, the project’s new director.

“The Papers of Abraham Lincoln entered a new era last year when it launched a website giving the world unprecedented access to Lincoln documents. The Abraham Lincoln Association played a pivotal role in transforming our vision into reality, and we’re grateful their support will continue,” Worthington said.

"The Abraham Lincoln Association has been a supporter of the Lincoln Legal Papers and the Papers of Abraham Lincoln for more than three decades," said ALA president Bob Willard. "We see the Papers as the 21st century effort to make the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln available to the widest possible audience, just as ALA did with the publication of the ‘Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln’ in the 1950s."

The goal of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln is to track down all documents to or from Abraham Lincoln and make them available online, complete with detailed notes explaining their historical significance.

An earlier project, the Lincoln Legal Papers, proved this digital approach could create a valuable resource and advance our understanding of Lincoln. But the successor project, the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, gathered documents for years without publishing. After Alan Lowe became executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in 2016, he overhauled the project in conjunction with State Historian Samuel Wheeler, a member of the ALPLM leadership team. They gathered advice from the nation’s top experts and established new policies and procedures that put the Papers on a productive path.

In April 2018, the Papers launched The Papers of Abraham Lincoln Digital Library with every known Lincoln document from the first 33 years of his life, from birth to the end of his legislative career. It provided instant access to 340 documents written by or to Lincoln and 4,839 others that provide context on issues he faced as a lawyer and legislator. New material has been added regularly since then.

Later in the year, Daniel Worthington was named the project’s new director. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Illinois and has 23 years of experience in digital humanities. That includes 13 years as managing editor of HarpWeek, which specialized in digitizing and publishing 19th-century Civil War newspapers, and 10 years with the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, where he has performed every stage of the project’s editorial work.

“Under Daniel, the Papers of Abraham Lincoln is back on track to produce the most important new resource for Lincoln scholarship in decades,” said Lowe, the library and museum’s executive director. “He is also building bridges to similar projects so we can find new and better ways to share historical information. We’re excited to see where it leads.”

The Papers is working with several partners, such as the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Project and the Frederick Douglass Papers, to create a website devoted to biographies of people from the Civil War era. It is also working with the University of Virginia Center for Digital Editing on a grant to support development of new tools to encourage the public to engage with historical documents online.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is dedicated to telling the story of America’s 16th president through old-fashioned scholarship and modern technology. It also serves as the state historical library.

The library holds an unparalleled collection of Lincoln material, as well as some 12 million items pertaining to other aspects of Illinois history. The museum uses exhibits, eye-catching special effects and innovative story-telling to educate and inspire visitors from around the world.

Learn more at www.PresidentLincoln @illinois.gov

[Christopher Wills]