Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Paul Lovejoy

The lecture will discuss how the construction of open-source relational databases has altered the scholarly study of slavery. Once it was thought that there was a
relatively limited number of primary sources for the reconstruction of African history and the formation of the African diaspora outside of Africa. The digital turn has enabled the introduction of vast quantities of primary source material into scholarly discourse, far beyond what was once thought possible. An examination of the websites associated with Walk With Web Inc. demonstrates what is being done, and the possibilities are for further development of digital tools that can organize
large quantities of data for purposes of historical reconstruction.