In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Access:Bane and Boon
  • Cynthia Patterson (bio)

I'm a newly-minted, if non-traditional age, Ph.D., so I can't really offer fond musings about how access has changed over the years. But I can say that issues of access drove my choice of a research project. As a graduate student, I also took on digital media projects. I think both the larger project and my experience with digital media projects served me well in the job-search. Issue of access, both print and digital, also helped me to develop a "best practices" approach to my teaching.

I work on the Philadelphia pictorials, the group of middle-class illustrated monthly magazines of art and literature that includes Graham's, Godey's, the Union, Peterson's and Miss Leslie's. I'm looking specifically at the visual materials. They've either been ignored by scholars, or simply mined as supporting evidence. I'm trying to understand how these magazines jockeyed with each other in the literary marketplace. And I'm examining the entire cycle of production, distribution, and consumption to figure out how the artists, engravers, authors, editors, and publishers contributing these magazines negotiated their own professionalization and pursued middle-class aspirations.

I started by reading these magazines on the American Periodicals Series on microfilm. I became curious about the visual materials in these magazines, largely because they were so dark on microfilm that often, I couldn't tell exactly what I was seeing. If you're analyzing textual material, it doesn't much matter if the microfilm's a little dark. But with visual materials, you really need to be able to see the images clearly, and most of them were too dark on microfilm.

Like most scholars, I was finding the World Wide Web an unbelievably rich source for access to networking and research. About that time, I discovered the Research Society for American Periodicals, the Making of America collection at Cornell and Michigan, and the few issues of Godey's available online. I also discovered Periodyssey, the rare book dealer in New York City, and quietly began buying up bound volumes, first of the Union, then of Graham's, Godey's and Peterson's. I also took coursework through George Mason University's Center for [End Page 117] History and New Media. While I was fascinated with the work they were doing, digital access became a source of dread: I lived in fear that someone else would suddenly digitize the magazines in my study before I could finish my project!

Digital access to finding aids for the manuscript evidence surrounding the writers, artists, engravers, editors, and publishers of these magazines greatly aided in the process of locating and applying for research fellowships and grants. The three research fellowships I won provided me the access to additional archival materials that continued to shape the project. But beyond that, I believe that demonstrating my ability to secure funding for my research aided my job search. George Mason's Cultural Studies Ph.D. program is young and still relatively unrecognized—I was graduate number 13, and our first graduate earned his doctorate at the age of 82. In fact, more than half of our graduates are non-traditional age. I believe strongly that the issue of access that drove my project in the first place, and led to my seeking outside funding for the project, also helped me secure my current position at a major research institution my first year on the job market.

Access to digital primary source materials will prove to be a boon to my teaching as well. I currently teach advanced composition courses for business and engineering majors at USF Lakeland, and have used both WebCT and Blackboard for course delivery. The ability to scan primary materials and post online allows me to provide students with easier access to my teaching materials—available at the click of a mouse, 24 hours a day. I look forward to building additional digital archives of these materials and creating lesson plans that will help students access these and other primary source materials available online. But because I also hear the frustrations of my colleagues that students only know...

pdf

Share