Day/time: May 6, 2025, 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.
Title: A Student-Centered Approach: How to Build Inclusive and Effective Digital Publishing Teams
Presenters:
- Lindsey R. Peterson (she/her), Digital Humanities Assistant Professor of Practice, University of South Dakota
- Mariah Cosens (she/her), CWRGM Researcher and History MA student, University of South Dakota
- Alessandra Diaz (she/her), CWRGM Researcher and History BA student, Columbia University
- Amiracle Funches (she/her), CWRGM Researcher and Historic Objects Collections Contract CatalD
Description: Incorporating student labor in library publishing projects presents challenges, such as the significant time commitment required to train students with little to no prior experience. Yet, well-structured university publishing programs that are responsive to student needs demonstrate that student involvement can be highly rewarding for both the project and students’ professional development.
Since its inception in 2019, the Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi project (CWRGM) has trained over 60 student researchers and editors in skills essential to digital publishing. Funded by the NHPRC and NEH, CWRGM is publishing more than 20,000 Civil War and Reconstruction-era documents from Mississippi’s governors’ offices with high-resolution images, metadata, transcriptions, and annotations at cwrgm.org. To accomplish this goal, CWRGM assembled a dynamic team of student researchers from across the nation who are at various stages in their careers.
The proposed panel features five student researchers and editors—including one now serving as project co-director—who have worked on CWRGM’s metadata, transcription, and annotation teams. Drawing on their experiences, panelists will discuss strategies for recruiting students from diverse academic and personal backgrounds, structuring project workflows to accommodate students’ varied schedules and commitments, and addressing challenges such as high turnover.
Panelists will also highlight ways to empower students by aligning project tasks with their career aspirations, providing meaningful skill development opportunities, and mentoring them to leverage their project experience into future academic and professional roles. Additionally, the panel will address methods for using anti-racist and reparative editing strategies for creating a supportive and inclusive work environment where students feel valued and motivated.
By centering student rather than faculty voices, this panel offers actionable and reproducible strategies for digital publishing projects with research initiatives and student training platforms. Together the panelists demonstrate how editorial projects can prepare the next generation of publishing professionals while advancing the accessibility of historical resources.