Building a Searchable Database for Collections of the Enslaved & Free Builders and Defenders of Nashville's Civil War Fortifications: A Community-Driven Linked Data Approach

FAIN: HAA-280775-21

Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN 37203-2416)
Angela Sutton (Project Director: January 2021 to present)

The development of a database of the enslaved and free Black builders and defenders of Nashville's Civil War Fortification through the use of community-driven linked data using the Spatial Historian platform.

This proposal requests funds to build a searchable database of aggregate data and transcribed microfilm collections of the enslaved and free Black builders and defenders of Nashville's Civil War Fortifications. The project proposes to take a linked data approach to upload community-sourced material about the Civil War in Nashville and make them available under a Creative Commons license using the Spatial Historian, a customizable historical and geospatial information system. The system allows for the extraction and analysis of the documents to integrate simultaneously the collection of data, extraction of content, and analysis and visualizations of the information according to customizations which are dictated by the public history and heritage community’s needs. The resulting product will be a website by and for public historians that allows for dynamic querying of the data, network and map visualizations, and the linking of data to other repositories of slavery and the US military.