Enhancing the Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies Digital Archive: A Project to Add Content, Improve Technology, and Strengthen Collaborative Networks
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Abstract
Principal Investigator. Project Team: Cliff Anderson, Paula Covington, Dale Poulter, Kara Schultz and Angela Sutton, Vanderbilt University.
This project builds on efforts of an international team of scholars dedicated to the preservation of the oldest records for Africans in the Americas. The Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies Digital Archive is hosted at Vanderbilt University and holds over 500,000 unique images, dating from the 16th-20th centuries. It preserves the history of between four and six million African and Afro-descended individuals and makes possible important new research on African and Afro-descended populations in the Americas. The ACLS Digital Extension Grant will enable the project team to add additional content to the ESSSS archive, enhance its current technology, strengthen collaborative networks of slavery scholars, and share digital preservation expertise with partner institutions with limited cyberinfrastructure.