By JEFFREY CASSADY
RAE Staff Writer
Pensacola –
When researchers at the University of West Florida set out last year to build an online maritime heritage portal,
Dr. Jamin Wells
knew the resulting collection of documents would be useful to historians like him.
So far, archivists working on the project, called the
Gulf Coast Maritime History and Heritage History Project
, have scanned more than 20,000 pages of material ranging from correspondences to parts of personal journals.
But the pieces collected don’t just tell the history of the people who lived along the northern Gulf Coast, said Wells, who serves as one of the project’s principal investigators. They also contain historical observations about the flora, fauna, and even weather of the region.
“From the Destin Fishing & History Museum, we’re digitizing the logbooks from the Destin Fishing Rodeo from 1954 to 1979,” Wells said. “These logs are just this treasure trove of information about local fish and fishing.”
The materials collected thus far, which are available online through a
beta version of the portal
, are packed with details that might be of interest to biologists, environmental scientists, and others outside the field of history, Wells said.
“It will speak to people outside my discipline,” Wells said. “This project has the potential to open up new areas of collaborative research.”
Wells also pointed to Pensacola Lighthouse keepers’ logs from the late 19th century as being of interest to those outside his field. The logs contain detailed daily weather reports.
“What’s unique and interesting to me changes as I talk about the project to different people,” Wells said. “When I tell an environmental scientist what we’re finding, we end up discussing how these documents might help us better understand things like beach erosion and the effects of storms.”
“Since the University Archives and West Florida History Center contain the largest research collection in existence on Pensacola and the West Florida region, we are thrilled to work with Dr. Wells and his students in adding digital collections from regional partners to the holdings to make them available to students, faculty, and the Panhandle community,” DeBolt said.
The University has partnered with a host of museums and libraries throughout the northern Gulf Coast region on the digital history project. Partner organizations submit historical documents and other materials, which University archivists and students then digitize and return.
Partner institutions include the Pensacola Lighthouse & Maritime Museum, the National Aviation Museum, the Gulf Breeze Area Historical Society, the Destin Fishing & History Museum, and the University of West Florida Historic Trust.
“We’re having conversations with other organizations,” Wells said. “We’re hoping to make as much material publicly available as possible.”
Wells hopes to have 5,000 discrete items, including full personal journals and logs, publicly available online next spring. The full version of the online portal should be live by then as well, he said.
“Historians can use the documents we’ve collected,” Wells said. “But they really open up possibilities for faculty and students across the University.”
The maritime digital history project materials have been included in
John C. Pace Library’s digital website
,
which provides researchers with nearly 50,000 additional West Florida research materials taken from collections of the University Archives and West Florida History Center.
