BlackPast.org

BlackPast.org is a web-based reference center that is dedicated primarily to the understanding of African-American history and the history of people of African ancestry. In 2011 the American Library Association's Reference and User Services Association included it in its list of the 25 Best Free Reference Websites of the Year. According to Blackpast.org, the website has a global audience of about two million visitors per year from over 100 nations. In 2009, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Brazil, and Germany ranked as the top five countries in visitors to the site after the United States.A 2008 website review described it as easily navigable and well organized but also as containing omissions among some features and as a work in progress. By 2009, the organization was selected by New York Public Library reference librarians as one of the top 25 hybrid print and electronic resources for the year.

BlackPast.org was founded in January 2004 by Dr. Quintard Taylor, the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History at the University of Washington. The initial website, designed by his teaching assistant George Tamblyn, was intended primarily as a research aid for those students and mainly featured short vignettes of significant people, places and events in African-American history. Under the direction of Dr. Taylor's daughter Jamila, the website was redesigned the following year to incorporate a new architecture and improved navigation features using Dreamweaver, creating the basis for a resource that would serve a larger research audience. In Spring 2005, Dr. Taylor received an email from a New Zealand researcher who had accessed the site. This was followed by correspondence from Russian students who had viewed the site. This led to a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of Russian universities by Dr. Taylor.

When it became evident that the site was being used outside of the campus community, additional features were added including a bibliography, timeline, links to related websites, major speeches, digital archives and genealogy sections. With the addition of a Bullitt research assistant and a high school intern, the website staff had grown to five by the end of its second year. In 2006, the website received its first funding when University of Washington History Department Chair John Findlay and the school's Office of Minority Affairs Director Nancy "Rusty" Barceló each agreed to provide $10,000 for website expansion. The seed money was used to hire Grip Media of Portland, Oregon, to design a professional web presence for BlackPast.org. That year, the number of visits received by the site exceeded 150,000, and it recorded 4.4 million hits.

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