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Project Details

The Digital Library on American Slavery (DLAS) compiles independent collections focused upon race and slavery in the American South, made searchable through a single, simple interface. DLAS houses tens of thousands of records relating to all 15 slave states and Washington, D.C. as well as a number of northern states. DLAS contains detailed personal information about over 100 thousand individuals, including enslaved people, enslavers, free people of color, and more.

The goal of the Digital Library on American Slavery is to bring together and make freely accessible public records related to enslavement, with an emphasis upon the names and stories of the enslaved. DLAS strives to be a documentation project, not an interpretive effort.

Subjects or Themes

African American, enslavement

Project Language(s)

English

Time Period

Geographic Location

Project Categories

Content Type

images, databases, transcriptions, and robust metadata.

Target Audience(s)

Creators

Richard Cox, David Gwynn

Year(s)

2004-present

Host Institution / Affiliation / Project Location

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Software Employed

  • Custom-build ASP.NET/SQL Server web application

Labor and Support

Project Cost

Partnerships, funding sources, or grant-funding acknowledgement

Initial funding for court petitions project, The National Endowment for the Humanities; initial funding for deeds project, The National Archives; initial funding for N.C. runaway slave notices, Institute of Museum and Library Studies