Content Selection Criteria

Content Selection Handout

Theme: The Growth of Democracy

• government by the people; especially: rule of the majority
• a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people
• the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
• the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges
  (Source: Merriam-Webster Online, http://m-w.com/dictionary)

Audiences

• K-12 Teachers and Students
• TN Citizens and Lifelong Learners
• Researchers and Scholars
• Information Professionals

Themes and Categories for Inclusion

How does your material relate to the above definitions of democracy, the four audiences, and/or the three areas listed below?

• Historical Themes in Tennessee History
  • These specific subjects will be covered in Volunteer Voices and are highly recommended for inclusion.
    • Frontier migration/ experiments in representative democracy, encounters with Native American
    • Jacksonian democracy and Tennessee’s leadership role in the Early Republic
    • Anti-democracy impulses: Slavery, free people of color, and Removal of Native Americans
    • Debate over slavery, the Secession Crisis, and the Civil War: Tennessee as a uniquely divided border state
    • Reconstruction and the freedmen: undocumented people in legal records, sharecropping
    • Taxation and the narrowing of the franchise: “Jim Crow” laws and the Poll tax
    • Utopian impulses of the 19th century such as Nashoba, Ruskin and Rugby
    • New South period and the industrialization of Tennessee
    • Women’s suffrage and Tennessee’s pivotal role in passage of 19th Amendment
    • Boss Crump, Prohibition, and machine politics in Tennessee, WWI
    • Scopes trial, rise of fundamentalism, and public education
    • Tennessee Valley Authority and “grass roots democracy”
    • Oak Ridge and WWII effort in Tennessee
    • Civil Rights movement in Tennessee
    • Modern Times in Tennessee

Tennessee State Department of Education US History Eras

http://www.tennessee.gov/tsla/educationoutreach/tah/eras.htm

• Three Worlds Meet (Beginnings to 1660)
• Colonization and Settlement (1585-1763)
• Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820)
• Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
• Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
• The Development of the Industrial U.S. (1870-1900)
• The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930)
• The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
• Postwar United States (1945-1970)
• Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

Requirements for inclusion

Item is

• relevant to the limitations and expansion of democracy in Tennessee history or represents historical and cultural significance that makes the item’s inclusion critical
• a primary source
• of clear provenance
• in the public domain or the institution has been granted permission for inclusion from the copyright holder in writing
• scanned at a minimum of 400 dpi and sent to Volunteer Voices as a tif file

Considerations for inclusion

Item Qualities

• How unique is the item?
• How significant is the item relative to the themes and categories discussed above, especially to the key theme of “democracy?”
• Information available about the item that would be useful in cataloging
• Level of usage or non-usage by the public
• Does the item highlight some of your institution’s “treasures?”
• Do the items as a group from your institution offer the public a broad representation of what your institution has to offer them?

Examples of Item Formats

• Letters and Diaries
• Government and legal documents
• Photographs/Illustrations/Broadsides
• Sheet music
• Slides
• Maps
• Newspaper articles/editorials

Condition of Item

• Ability to be digitized without causing damage to the item
• Will the item be visually appealing when digitized and displayed online?
• Will digitizing the item aid in its preservation?

Collection Development Policy- Revised

“The Growth of Democracy in Tennessee” as a Collection Development Policy for the Volunteer Voices Digitization Project.

Approved by the Content Committee of the Preserve and Share Taskforce of the Volunteer Voices, TEL II Initiative, November 2004

“The Growth of Democracy in Tennessee” can be useful as a general organizing principle for the thematic content of this project.  As a broad conceptualization of content, it is capable of encompassing collections that illustrate a great variety of important themes in Tennessee’s history.  In addition to the obvious theme of the widening (and contraction) of the political franchise, “Democracy in Tennessee” allows us to pull in materials related to social movements, cultural issues and events, and artistic and craft productions from the state’s inception down to fairly recent times.  It affords the project a theme that is broad enough to encompass many different kinds of materials, over the 200-year scope of the state’s history, without being so vague as to lack focus and unity.  This policy was greatly influenced by the ten eras of the Tennessee State Department of Education’s Framework for American History.

Rather than merely amassing a bunch of “stuff” related to Tennessee history, we can collect from repositories by offering them a specific menu of needs related to a detailed, periodized outline of events, people, and issues.  Aside from making it clear to potential participants what it is we are looking for, this will give us a narrative framework on which to hang documents, images, artifacts, and artworks—all with the aim of conveying a story.  This structured content will also make it vastly easier to tie into the state’s similarly structured K-12 curriculum standards for teaching American history—another prime objective.

One more advantage of this thematic approach is that it cuts across regional lines and allows us to collect from many different sizes and types of repositories.  The major academic and regional collections in the state all contain manuscript, documentary, and photographic resources that can feed into the Volunteer Voices digital portal.  More importantly for the statewide reach and appeal of the project, however, is the fact that nearly all local archives in the state have records that could also be used for a collecting project of this sort.  The most modest county archive in Tennessee has items that would help to tell the story of Jacksonian democracy, slavery, suffrage and the poll tax, etc.  Thus, we have a topic that cuts across regional, racial, and class boundaries and would elicit archival material from counties whether they are rich or poor, metropolitan or rural, mountain Republican or delta Democrat.

A rough chronological breakdown of some of the themes and issues covered by “The Growth of Democracy in Tennessee,” along with examples of relevant records, visuals, and collections, can be seen in the following schematic:

“The Growth of Democracy in Tennessee”

1. Frontier migration/experiments in representative democracy, encounters with Native Americans (Tennessee American History Curriculum Eras 2 and 3)
   • Early political compacts & land records, e.g. Watauga articles, Cumberland Compact; legislative petitions; State of Franklin documents; surveying plats & maps.
2. Jacksonian democracy and Tennessee’s leadership role in the early republic (Tennessee American History Curriculum Eras 3 and 4)
   • Papers and paintings of prominent TN statesmen, ambassadors & military leaders; political cartoons; electoral paraphernalia & other evidence of the widening of the franchise.
3. Anti-democratic impulses: Slavery, free people of color, and Removal of Native Americans (Tennessee American History Curriculum Eras 4 and 5)
   • Treaties with the natives; speeches & correspondence of chiefs; McKinney and Hall lithographs; slave bills of sale, court cases, & manumission documents; The Emancipator and other abolitionist newspapers; acts limiting rights of free blacks.
4. Debate over slavery, the Secession Crisis, and the Civil War: Tennessee as a uniquely divided border state (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 5)
   • Runaway slave literature; engravings & other illustrations of anti- and pro-slavery actions; proclamations & broadsides on secession referenda; Civil War occupation records.
5. Reconstruction and the freedmen: appearance of hitherto undocumented people in legal records; the fastening of sharecropping on the countryside (Tennessee American History Curriculum Eras 5 and 6)
   • Freedmen marriage bonds, sharecropper contracts, & court proceedings; chattel mortgages & crop liens; Harper’s & Leslie’s engravings; cartes-de-visite and photographs; implements of cotton agriculture; diaries & journals.
6. Taxation and the narrowing of the franchise: “Jim Crow” laws and poll tax (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 7)
   • Poll tax receipts; transcript testimony from pivotal segregation cases; Ida B. Wells papers; examples of local ordinances.
7. Utopian Impulses of the 19th century such as Nashoba, Ruskin, and Rugby (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 6)
   • Papers and photographs from individual settlements.
8. New South period and the industrialization of Tennessee (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 6 and 7)
   • Business records from a variety of repositories; documents revealing the move away from agricultural production and northern incursion.
9. Women’s suffrage and Tennessee’s pivotal role in passage of 19th Amendment (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 7)
   • Campaign literature pro and con; photographs of marches & events; suffragist diaries; photogravures from local newspapers; Harry Burn’s telegram.
10. E.H. Crump, prohibition, and machine politics in Tennessee (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 7)
    • Papers of Edward H. Crump & Kenneth McKellar; papers of African American leaders Robert Church & James Napier; prohibition campaign literature; newspaper editorials; records of the Carmack murder.
11. Scopes trial, rise of fundamentalism, and public education (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 7)
    • Trial transcripts of cross-examination & testimony; artifacts from Dayton; photographs and cartoons; examples from TN textbooks; documents from the modern Klan & other vigilante groups; Commonwealth Fund & Rosenwald school records.
12. Tennessee Valley Authority and “grass roots democracy” (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 8)
    • Photographs, maps, & newspaper clippings from TVA dam projects; cemetery removal records; land acquisition & community removal records (e.g. Butler, TN); rural electrification records; papers of key politicians.
13. Oak Ridge and the WWII effort in Tennessee (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 8)
    • Oak Ridge manuscript collections and oral histories; military records; family papers.

      Government images of sites, local collections and photographs.

14. Civil rights movement in Tennessee (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 9)
    • Highlander School records; voter registration in Fayette County; Nashville sit-ins material
15. Modern times in Tennessee (Tennessee American History Curriculum Era 10)
    • Papers of modern Tennessee politicians, Media sources, Current census data

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