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By Eleanor

My project is a database of sermons printed in New England in the pre-Revolutionary War colonial period (late 1600s to mid-1700s). The digital exhibit is hosted on WordPress, with a static front page detailing giving some historical context for the sermons. That page will also give a link to another page where I cite the scholarly sources I used in my research for visitors who might want to do further reading on the subject. Each sermon is a blog post containing an image of the cover page of the sermon and data on when, where, and by whom the original sermon was delivered, and when, where, and by whom this copy was printed. I also include any interesting notes about this printed sermon and a bibliographical citation and link back to the archive where I found it. The post is then also put into WordPress “Categories” representing the data about the preacher and printer. These categories are listed and hyperlinked at the bottom of each post. Users can click on the name of a category (like “Published in 1687” or “Printer: Samuel Green”) to see a list of all other sermons that also belong to that category. At the top of the page, there is space to put background information about the person or place being searched for. There will also be a page where users can browse lists of categories.

This filtering system provided by the digital medium of WordPress brings something new to the table with regards to historical analysis of these sources. It allows users to easily sort the data and to look for connections or patterns. Hopefully I’ll find some interesting correlations as I continue to build the site. Themed databases can also be useful for historians – maybe someone studying this topic in the future will make use of the fact that I’ve already pulled together relevant sources from several different databases.

I started my research by looking at what had been produced by the earliest colonial printers, and what I ended up finding was a lot of sermons produced in New England. I knew from previous history classes that Christianity (and especially Protestant, and in some areas Puritan or Quaker, versions of Christianity) were important to early New England society, but this discovery really drove that idea home for me. When given a new, revolutionary form of communication technology, what did colonial New Englanders chose to do with it? Publish sermons. Maybe it was an explicit choice on the part of printers or maybe religious printings were just what ended up making them the most money and they followed the market. Either way, the extant primary sources tell us a story of a time and place in which Christianity was a cultural priority. As well as giving historical context and directions on how to navigate my site on the front page, I plan to talk about this scholarly analysis there too (or maybe to break it up into sub-pages all linked to by that introduction).

I’m working on coming up with a clever title for the project and giving the site an interesting and easily navigable design. Clunky database interfaces and poorly designed sites can really put a damper on the research process. (As was excellently described by Sherwood and Carolyn’s critique of the Library of Congress’s “American Memory” database.) I want to make my database as streamlined and appealing as possible, so I’m asking questions about that as I do the peer review assignment. (Suggestions are welcome!)