We are excited to announce that Rutgers University’s Scarlet and Black project has been selected as a testing partner for On These Grounds: Slavery and the University. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, On These Grounds is a cross-institutional digital initiative to describe the history of enslavement found in archival materials at colleges and universities. This initiative is led by Michigan State University, with core partners at Georgetown University and the University of Virginia.
On These Grounds is developing a linked open data model to organize, publish, and share information about the history of slavery with interested scholars, students, alumni, descendants, and members of the public. Over the next year, Rutgers will work to test this data model while closely examining our institutional archives. In addition to the core project partners at MSU, Georgetown, and UVA, we will work together with testing partners at Washington and Lee University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Georgia, and Hampden-Sydney College.
The Rutgers testing team will be led by Jesse Bayker, Scarlet and Black Digital Archivist, and Francesca Giannetti, Digital Humanities Librarian at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
Check out today’s announcement from On These Grounds for more details about this project.