Slave Voyages is an archive of documents about the largest slave trade in history. It presents information in a variety of ways to make it accessible for educators as well as historians. Its goal is to have a collection of all data about the slave trade in one place to make it easier to access. This project is open source/access. One thing I’m curious about after seeing how deep the information on this site goes is how is it verified? There are many contributors and it looks like even I could contribute if I made an account.
Sources
Slave Voyages is divided into three sections: Trans-Atlantic, Intra-American, and People of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Each of these sections use different sources. The Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American sections each have hundreds of sources collected by dozens of contributors from around the world. This is a central place for all this information so any information about any voyages are welcome on this site. The People section is drawn from two sources: the African Names Database and the Oceans of Kinfolk Database. Much of this information is from the Registers of Liberated Africans at the Sierra Leone National Archives and the British National Archives in London.
Processes
This site is powered by Oracle and currently hosted by Rice University. Most of the raw data and original documents have been input into spreadsheets categorizing all of the journeys taken by Slaves as well as many names, pronunciations, and origins of people. Maps and timelines have been digitized as well.
Presentation
As mentioned above this site is divided into three sections. You can access raw data along with essays and analysis about the information. The information is also displayed using other tools including 3D models of vessels, interactive maps, timelines, and time lapses to make it more accessible.
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What an interesting project! The project I looked at also used open source which gave me the same question of credibility and verification. However it turned out that the library that sourced the project (University of Michigan) processed and finalized the collected data. Maybe Rice University also does the same? Looking at the website, the presentation is beautifully done. I really like the imagery alongside the analysis.