The United States Civil War Collection ( http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/civilwar1/ ) gathers eight Civil War diaries from Union soldiers in one place for easy discovery and includes subject analysis at the line, or even word, level within the markup. The eight diaries were reviewed to identify frequently mentioned topics that could be the basis of a browsable topic search. The following seventeen topics were identified that would be of most use to researchers, students, public historians, and other users:
- African Americans
- Battles
- Clothing
- Dates
- Death and Casualties
- Desertion
- Food
- Health and Medicine
- Leisure
- Military Units & Maritime Vessels
- Money
- Music
- People
- Places
- Religion
- Transportation
- Verse & Drawings
The result is the ability for the student/researcher to search across all eight diaries by topic, date, or name. In addition, since many of the diarists misspelled, abbreviated, or alluded to without naming topics, normalization of the names of persons, places, battles and military units and maritime vessels was considered an aid to search and retrieval. Definitions of obscure or obsolete words were included in the markup as notes to aid in the creation of an educational tool. The collection has been used for classroom use, and a sample curriculum will be available.