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Joshua
Barney and the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla
A Documentary History
Project
Scope
This digital history
project is an experiment to see if a traditional, letterpress documentary
editing project can be adapted to the Web. The Naval Historical Center
has currently published two volumes of a four-volume series, The Naval
War of 1812: A Documentary History. Documents include such diverse
subjects as naval preparedness, recruitment, construction and fitting
out of ships, medical treatment, discipline, and financial constraints.
The editors selected
documents from many repositories to include both British and American
plans and reports, as well as personal letters. They have arranged them
by themes within theaters of operations with the hope that researchers
will find new topics to study.
I have limited the
scope of this digital project to one theme within the Chesapeake Bay theater--Joshua
Barney’s creation of a flotilla of gunboats and barges to defend
the tributaries of the bay against the depredations of the marauding Royal
Navy.
The ultimate goal
in designing this web page is to attract more readers than those who currently
access the letterpress edition. Determining what to include in a site
depends on the audience one wishes to attract. Scholarly researchers and
college students would be the primary users of this site. Scholars specializing
in the War of 1812 will find a wealth of information, often non-military
in character, in these documents.
Because this site
will incorporate both flat html in a traditional narrative format and
a database, the user will have the option to read groupings in a linear
fashion or search for specific subjects.
As scholars who visit
the site may wish to purchase the volumes, I have provided the section
“Volumes & Project” which describes the series and purchasing
arrangements. This section will also link to the Naval
Historical Center’s web page where all aspects of naval history
are depicted--not just the War of 1812.
The web site will
also be useful to college students, who have limited time to spend on
their research, as the site will provide multiple research tools. Introductory
essays will preface each grouping of documents, and annotations will provide
explanatory notes, as will links to the “Biographies” and
“Chronologies” sections.
Links to “Maps
and Images” will provide a visual perspective. The “Archaeological
Site” will attract those interested in material culture. In addition,
the college student will benefit from having an extensive “Bibliography”
section that will save him time in perusing multiple texts for monographs
on the subject.
Because this site
will require considerable time, initially, to adapt the letterpress edition
to the web, I have decided to forgo using it as an educational tool for
high school and grammar school users. However, the potential is there
for more outreach, as I could document the efforts of a group of Maryland
high school students who built a three-quarter-sized replica of one of
Barney’s barges for a school project.
Finally, the general
public and the press will also benefit from the information on this site,
but the additional interest may increase research inquiries and thus spur
the editors to include a FAQ section of commonly asked reference questions.
However, having a FAQ section would reduce the time now spent in answering
queries received by phone or mail, by either referring the person to the
web site or sending him a copy of the relevant material on the site. Frank
Grizzard, associate editor of the Papers of George Washington, reported
just this scenario in a November 2002 interview.
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