SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
EXPLORE +
  • About infoDOCKET
  • Academic Libraries on LJ
  • Research on LJ
  • News on LJ
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Libraries
    • Academic Libraries
    • Government Libraries
    • National Libraries
    • Public Libraries
  • Companies (Publishers/Vendors)
    • EBSCO
    • Elsevier
    • Ex Libris
    • Frontiers
    • Gale
    • PLOS
    • Scholastic
  • New Resources
    • Dashboards
    • Data Files
    • Digital Collections
    • Digital Preservation
    • Interactive Tools
    • Maps
    • Other
    • Podcasts
    • Productivity
  • New Research
    • Conference Presentations
    • Journal Articles
    • Lecture
    • New Issue
    • Reports
  • Topics
    • Archives & Special Collections
    • Associations & Organizations
    • Awards
    • Funding
    • Interviews
    • Jobs
    • Management & Leadership
    • News
    • Patrons & Users
    • Preservation
    • Profiles
    • Publishing
    • Roundup
    • Scholarly Communications
      • Open Access

February 15, 2019 by Gary Price

Freedom on the Move Builds Database of Fugitive Slave Ads (Research/Crowdsourcing Project)

February 15, 2019 by Gary Price

From Cornell University:

Freedom on the Move (FOTM), an online project devoted to fugitives from slavery in North America, is enlisting the help of the public to create a database for tens of thousands of advertisements placed by enslavers who wanted to recapture self-liberating Africans and African-Americans.

The ads were placed in newspapers by enslavers trying to locate fugitives and by jailers wanting to return captured fugitives to the enslavers claiming them as “property.” The ads offered monetary rewards and included a wealth of personal details about the fugitives’ appearance, mannerisms, clothing, speech, family members, places of origin and destinations.

The insights the ads provide into the experiences of enslaved Africans and African-Americans are especially valuable because so little information about them as individuals has been preserved.

The free, open-source site has been designed to be accessible to the public. Users can quickly set up an account and begin working with digitized versions of the advertisements. Users transcribe the text of an advertisement and then answer questions about the ad and the person it describes. They can choose to transcribe ads from a particular state or specific time period, depending on their areas of interest.

The output of this crowdsourced project will be a growing database of thousands of individuals, and the places and people associated with them. This in turn will be an invaluable research aid, pedagogical tool and resource for genealogists, classes and individuals.

“This is a crucial set of sources about black people’s resistance to slavery, so we think it’s particularly appropriate to launch it during Black History Month,” said Ed Baptist, professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The FOTM team will work with high school and college classes, museums, libraries and historic sites to make this resource widely available. The database will also serve genealogists, for whom the lack of descriptive personal sources on enslaved people can be a problem.

Currently the site has approximately 12,000 newspaper advertisements available for crowdsourcing, with thousands more still to be added. The researchers aren’t sure how many of these advertisements exist in digital, paper or microfilm form, but they suspect the total may exceed 100,000. They hope to attract more scholars, archives and organizations who can contribute advertisements to the database.

Baptist and William Block, director of the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER), are the principal investigators for FOTM. The database is a joint project of the Department of History, CISER and Cornell University Library. Lead historians include Vanessa Holden of the University of Kentucky, Hasan Jeffries of Ohio State University, Mary Niall Mitchell of the University of New Orleans and Joshua Rothman of the University of Alabama.

The project has received major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Archives.

Direct to Freedom on the Move

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Archives and Special Collections, Associations and Organizations, Funding, Journal Articles, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users

SHARE:

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Job Zone

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Infodocket Posts

Deepfakes are Becoming a Cottage Industry; STM US Annual Conference 2023 to Take Place in DC (April 26-27);...

Columbia: A Judge Just Used ChatGPT to Make a Court Decision (via VICE) Coming Soon: STM US Annual Conference 2023 to Take Place in DC (April 26-27) FCC Announces Over ...

New Journal Article: "Sustainability 3.0 in Libraries: A Challenge for Management"

The article linked below was published today (February 3, 2023). Title Sustainability 3.0 in Libraries: A Challenge for Management Author Alice Keller University Library Basel, University of Basel,  Switzerland Source ...

U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Nobel Foundation to Hold Nobel Prize Summit on Countering Misinformation and Building...

From a National Academies Announcement: The Nobel Prize Summit Truth, Trust and Hope will bring together Nobel Prize laureates and other world-renowned experts and leaders for a global dialogue on how to stop ...

With Support From the Arcadia Fund, MIT Press Announces New Initiative to Flip Existing Subscription-Based Journals to a...

From a MIT Press Announcement:  In keeping with its mission and longstanding commitment to increase access to scholarship, the MIT Press is pleased to announce shift+OPEN. This new initiative is designed ...

A New EPUB Reader For E-Books From the Library of Congress Open Access Books Collection 

From a Library of Congress Blog Post: The Open Access Books Collection on loc.gov includes approximately 6,000 contemporary open access e-books covering a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works ...

Panel Discussion Video Recording: "Internet Freedom: Information Communication, Accessibility and Archiving"

The panel discussion video recording embedded below from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) was recorded on February 1, 2023.  Description This is a discussion on censorship-resistance, web archiving and ensuring ...

RLUK Releases Community-Driven Toolkit for the Development and Delivery of Virtual Reading Rooms (VRRs)

From RLUK (Research Libraries UK): The Virtual Reading Rooms (VRRs) Toolkit is a resource for all collection-holding institutions, including libraries, archives, and museums, which are interested in setting up a VRR consultation ...

Microsoft Bing to Rely on GPT-4, ChatGPT Mobile App Planned, Rumours Say; Senator Calls on Apple and Google...

Microsoft Bing to Rely on GPT-4, ChatGPT Mobile App Planned, Rumours Say (via The Decoder) & Microsoft Teams gets an AI upgrade with OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 (via The Decoder) Resources ...

Library of Congress Opens New Web Archive Collection Documenting Protests Against Racism & Learn About LC's Black History...

From the Library of Congress (Full Text of Announcement): A new web archive collection from the Library of Congress documents the civil unrest sparked by the police murder of George ...

AI: arXiv Announces New Policy on ChatGPT and Similar Tools

From an arXiv Blog Post: The recent release of AI technology that generates new text has raised serious questions among the research community. For one, “Can ChatGPT be named an ...

ResearchGate and De Gruyter Announce a New Content Syndication Partnership

From a Joint Statement (via De Gruyter): ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and De Gruyter, an independent academic publisher, have today announced a content syndication partnership that will see ...

EveryLibrary Releases 2022 Annual Report; ARL: Celebrating Black History Month 2023 & More News Headlines

ARL: Celebrating Black History Month 2023 EveryLibrary Releases 2022 Annual Report ||| Full Text Report Germany: DFG Launches Cooperation with the OAPEN Foundation IFLA: Applications for Public Library of the ...

ADVERTISEMENT

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Tweets by infoDOCKET

ADVERTISEMENT

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • Programs+
  • Design
  • Leadership
  • People
  • COVID-19
  • Advocacy
  • Opinion
  • INFOdocket
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Booklists
  • Prepub Alert
  • Book Pulse
  • Media
  • Readers' Advisory
  • Self-Published Books
  • Review Submissions
  • Review for LJ

Awards

  • Library of the Year
  • Librarian of the Year
  • Movers & Shakers 2022
  • Paralibrarian of the Year
  • Best Small Library
  • Marketer of the Year
  • All Awards Guidelines
  • Community Impact Prize

Resources

  • LJ Index/Star Libraries
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies

Events & PD

  • Online Courses
  • In-Person Events
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Submit Features/News
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Careers at MSI


© 2023 Library Journal. All rights reserved.


© 2022 Library Journal. All rights reserved.