Lincoln Editor

              January - March 2006 Volume 6 Number 1
PROJECT MAKES PREPARATIONS FOR NATIONAL ARCHIVES SEARCH
In February, Director Daniel Stowell
and Associate Director John
Lupton traveled to College Park,
Maryland, to make final arrangements
for the launch of the project’s multi-year
search of the National Archives.
The National Archives likely holds
more Lincoln documents than all other
repositories combined. However, the
Lincoln documents are filed in
hundreds of record series in as many
as eighty different record groups, representing the full range
of nineteenth-century filing systems in a rapidly expanding
federal government. Finding the documents that are within
the project’s scope will be a complex and time-consuming
task.
The National Archives Building in downtown
Washington, DC, houses the Army, Navy, War Department,
Judicial, and Congressional records from the Civil War era.
Records from the State, Treasury, and Interior Departments
are preserved at the Archives II building
in College Park. In June of this year,
researchers will begin the multi-year
search and imaging process by searching
record groups at Archives II. Stowell will
work with the researchers in June, July,
and August to get the process underway.
Lupton will work with the team from
September through November and
refine the processes of searching for,
selecting, and imaging documents.
In their recent visit, Stowell and Lupton met with
National Archives officials to discuss a variety of issues,
including scanning and computer equipment requirements,
personnel, security policies, and procedures for reporting
documents needing conservation treatment. They also met
with digitization professionals to discuss equipment,
interviewed a potential researcher, and met with Library of
Congress representatives about digitizing the Library’s many
Lincoln documents.
National Archives II
College Park, Maryland
LUPTON RECEIVES PROMOTION TO ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
In January, John Lupton received a
promotion to become the Associate Director and an
Associate Editor of the
Papers of Abraham
Lincoln. His nearly
fifteen years of service
to the Lincoln Legal
Papers and Papers of
Abraham Lincoln has
made him an invaluable
member of the staff.
Lupton manages the finances and computer resources of
the project. He also serves as the project’s primary liaison
with the University of Illinois at Springfield.
In recent months, Lupton has taken the lead in the
project’s migration to the PubMan content management
system. As Associate Editor, he will be directly responsible
for all aspects of the project’s data management needs. He
serves as the staff expert on PubMan, and he forwards
requests for modifications to the vendor. Lupton continues
to be an expert on Lincoln’s handwriting and performs his
other editorial tasks admirably. He and his wife Kathy, their
three daughters, and their three dachshunds live in Springfield.
Lupton looking for Lincoln
legals in Macon County in 1992.