This website, “Student Activism at Duke University” is a joint project involving several units at Duke University Libraries: the Social Sciences Group, the Humanities Group, and the Duke University Archives. Its purpose is to document student activism in the 1930s and 1940s at Duke University.
The history of this project began in the summer of 2016, when we decided that we needed a sample project in order to learn and apply skills in building and managing a collaborative digital project. More importantly, we wanted to experience such a project from the perspective of a researcher in order to better understand the work of our students, faculty and staff.
Initially the Social Sciences Group and the Humanities Group generated several different project ideas. As we explored these possibilities, we realized that researching student activism offered several advantages. We had a wealth of information on student activism in the University Archives, also the time period was little studied and would benefit from exposure. It invited a number of new skills, including research in archives, text-mining, building a time-line and developing a website. For additional information on the skills we learned see the "Skills Acquired" section of this site.