Since I am moving here next year, I decided I would blog about an online exhibition at the state archives in West Virginia. There are a few online exhibitions on the West Virginia State Archive's website. All of them have a layout similar to this one about the creation of West Virginia as a unified state.
Collection Principles
"This exhibit offers historians, students, and others interested in West Virginia's statehood period the opportunity to read the actual words of the participants themselves. Through transcriptions of the proceedings of the First and Second Wheeling conventions, President Lincoln's opinion on the admission of West Virginia, and other primary-source documents, individuals will learn about the process by which West Virginia became the thirty-fifth state in the Union. Illustrations of participants in the process, as well as secondary resource materials, are also available as part of the online exhibit. "
This website is stated to be a work in progress and additional materials will be added in the coming months. There is no date indicating when this website was first added or when it was updated last.
Object Characteristics
The website is divided into sixteen chapters telling the tale of how West Virginia became a state. The table of contents page lists the titles of each of the chapters. In each of the chapters there are documents and photographs illustrating the narrative that is being told on the site. Some of the images allow you to enlarge them by clicking on them while others do not. The enlarged images are jpeg files.
There are 3 other sections titled primary documents, images and other sources that provide a list and links of the documents and images found on this site. On the images page there is a brief description of the image. The images are divided into sections alphabetically.
Primary documents are listed in the chapters that pertain to the topic such as particular conventions.
Metadata
The metadata for the images and documents varies from image to image. Some include the title, provenance, artist, author, date etc...
I wish there was more information regarding the location of these documents within the archives themselves.
Intended Audience
The intended audience for this website is anyone interested in the history behind how West Virginia became one of the 50 states of the US. I know funding for the archives is very sparse so it is hard for me to criticize their online exhibitions when I am surprised they have any at all. The site was very easy to navigate and interesting from a historical perspective despite the simplicity of the layout and design.
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