MHS awarded NHPRC grant

This fall, the Massachusetts Historical Society was awarded a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to digitize the Adams Papers item-level paper catalog. The fifty-year old catalog represents over 100,000 documents held by the MHS and other repositories and private owners and reflects the known universe of the private and public correspondence of Presidents John and John Quincy Adams, their wives, children, and extended family. The two-year project will produce an online XML database of the catalog, available at the MHS website, as well as a viable strategy and methodology for other institutions to digitize their own item-level paper catalogs. This blog will serve as a resource for project staff and interested researchers to track the progress of the project and to refer to all technical documentation and project directives. We hope the blog will also provide a forum for researchers, librarians, and archivists (and any other interested parties!) to ask questions and offer feedback as the catalog grows.