Broadening Access to Early State Constitutional Records

Broadening Access to Early State Constitutional Records | Nicholas Cole

Quill has developed leading digital editions of key constitutional documents of the United States. The Knowledge Exchange Fellowship enabled us to start converting our academic resources for use in wider educational settings, as well as laying the groundwork for future research projects.

By partnering with ConSource, an organization with expertise in the American K-12 curriculum, we hoped to create materials for classroom use and to collaborate on a strategy for research into early state constitutions. A workshop in Oxford included representatives of other research projects and public-education focused organizations.

ConSource provided valuable insights into curriculum requirements and the classroom environment, while the workshop led to new opportunities in the K-12 community through collaborations with the Bill of Rights Institute (BRI) and Utah Valley University (UVU). UVU launched a series of training events for teachers and will co-host a summer programme in Oxford in 2021. BRI featured Nicholas Cole in online programming for Constitution Day 2019 (targeted for classroom use and reaching more than 14,675 viewers) and recorded a series of follow-up interviews.

Since then, our own Google Analytics data has shown increased use of our platform across the US. Work on a strategy for research into the creation and drafting of early state constitutions resulted in a ‘U.S. State Constitutions Network’, bringing together academics with an interest in state constitutional development and representatives of organizations that would disseminate the research-outputs.

Our objectives were endorsed by the award of a prestigious Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to UVU to work with Quill on state constitution-writing. Cole said, ‘This work will enable us to study the complex web of influences that helped to form the states of the American West… The NEH has recognized both the intrinsic value of this research, and the opportunities that it provides students to deepen their understanding of archival research and the latest digital techniques. The collaboration of Pembroke College with institutions like UVU enables research to take advantage of the expertise and resources of two very different institutions, and is a model of successful, transatlantic cooperation.’

The KE Fellowship has enabled us to develop a new scholarly network and to deepen understanding of the challenges of classroom-resource development. We have used the insights generated to improve our current platform and to plan a programme of work for on-going research and development.

Knowledge Exchange Fellowships Brochure

Image depicting a page of a handwritten constitutional record