Sheila A. Brennan

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) is migrating the Papers of the War Department 1784-1800, an online documentary edition comprising nearly 43,000 digital documents, to Omeka S to revitalize and stabilize this legacy digital humanities project. The migration allows the team to redesign the user interface thus enabling greater use and discoverability of early federal documents. In Omeka S the project’s existing metadata that includes the names of thousands of individuals and geographic places referenced in correspondence will be connected across the semantic web as linked open data. The project also will develop four learning modules for use in upper-level high school and introductory undergraduate courses. Enhanced documentation and outreach combined with a new system will make the Papers of the War Department more intuitive and inviting as it expands the project’s user base.