HomeBlogStudent Voices Working as a Digital History Research Assistant by Annabelle RichardsonDecember 16, 2025 Share: Section NavigationSkip section navigationIn this sectionBlog Home AI and Engaged Learning Assessment of Learning Capstone Experiences CEL News CEL Retrospectives CEL Reviews Collaborative Projects and Assignments Community-Based Learning Data Literacy Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity ePortfolio Feedback First-Year Experiences Global Learning Health Sciences High Impact Practices Immersive Learning Internships Learning Communities Mentoring Relationships Online Education Place-Based Learning Professional and Continuing Education Publishing SoTL Reflection and Metacognition Relationships Residential Learning Communities Service-Learning Signature Work Student Leadership Student-Faculty Partnership Studying EL Supporting Neurodivergent and Physically Disabled Students Undergraduate Research Work-Integrated Learning Writing Transfer in and beyond the University Style Guide for Posts to the Center for Engaged Learning Blog This summer, I worked as a research assistant for Dr. Amanda Laury Kleintop’s research project in Civil War digital history. I transcribed documents, collaborated with fellow research assistants, and learned more about data entry, as well as the Civil War and post-Civil War eras. During the Civil War, African American men in Confederate and southern Union border states enlisted in the Union army. Between 1865 and 1866, the United States government proposed and ratified the 13th and 14th Amendments, abolishing slavery. My work mainly consisted of transcribing claim ledgers, which were created during this era, in order to keep track of the claims of Border State enslavers who sought compensation from the United States for formerly enslaved people who had enlisted in the Union army. I learned a lot about transcription as a method of digital archival, the importance of being particular with data entry, and the importance of having both qualitative and quantitative data. My Work Transcription refers to reading handwritten sources and entering the data into a digital, typed format, though audio and video sources are also often transcribed. Transcription in itself makes data more accessible, as online records seek to preserve information found in archives digitally. Prior to transcribing a new set of documents, Dr. Kleintop provided us research assistants with a transcription guide and template. This guide showed us how we should transcribe, ensuring attention to detail in the transcription of every document. This was not to say that we did not encounter issues with the centuries-old cursive handwriting, or the interpretation of nineteenth-century shorthand (see figure 1). Figure 1. Nineteenth-century handwriting encountered during transcription. In my transcriptions, I encountered both quantitative and qualitative data. I transcribed the dates of when claims were made or when soldiers enlisted, the names and locations of both claimants and enlisted (formerly enslaved) soldiers, and, in some cases, the names of the enlisting officers and which regiment and company the soldiers served in (see figure 2). Figure 2. Claim ledger entry showing names, dates, and service details. By having both qualitative and quantitative data, we can create a more comprehensive story. If we are left with just dates and numbers, we are left wondering who is involved and where it occurred. On the reverse, if we are only given names and locations, we lack information about when events occurred, and even the historical context of why they occurred. Besides just working with the data, Dr. Kleintop introduced us to the scholarship of another digital historian, Jessica Marie Johnson, as a way to keep us engaged with the work and its historical context. Johnson had written on the subject of the commodification of African Americans in the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slavery, and the fears of and practice of subsequent (whether intentional or not) recommodification of these same people. Johnson’s argument—that in “doing histories of slavery”, “there is nothing neutral”—served as a way for us as research assistants to examine what more we could be doing to avoid treating this work as simply data entry, and forgetting the humanity of these formerly enslaved people whose names we were transcribing into a digital ledger (Johnson 2018). Takeaways I found much value in the work that I performed, both in the short-term, and in preparation for Dr. Kleintop’s long-term goals for the project. My main takeaway from this project was that transcription is one way to preserve archival sources and make them more accessible, but only if documents are transcribed with attention to detail both in data entry and in interpretation. In this case, transcribing these claim ledgers can provide historians, and hopefully a larger audience, with information on people during this time, but only if the transcribers and audience alike approach the sources with historical understanding and empathy. References Johnson, Jessica Marie. 2018. “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads.” Social Text 36 (4): 57–79. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-7145658. About the Author Annabelle Richardson is a History and Spanish double major with a minors in International & Global Studies and Latin American Studies. She worked as a DataNexus/Center for Engaged Learning Research Assistant for Dr. Amanda Laury Kleintop in the summer of 2025. Richardson is a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and plans to attend law school after graduation. How to Cite This Post Richardson, Annabelle. “Working as a Digital History Research Assistant.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog). December 16, 2025. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/working-as-a-digital-history-research-assistant.
