FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
INDIANAPOLIS — A University Library project that traces the origin of the word “Hoosier” won third place in the National Endowment for the Humanities’ nationwide contest in the field of digital humanities.
The purpose of the “Chronicling America Data Challenge” competition was to use digital research tools to discover and publish previously untold stories hidden in historically significant database collections.
The University Library project, “Chronicling Hoosier,” is a collaboration of three Center for Digital Scholarship librarians: Kristi Palmer, associate dean of digital scholarship; Ted Polley, social sciences librarian; and Caitlin Pollock, digital humanities librarian. For their efforts, they will share a cash prize of $2,000 and receive an invitation to present their research findings at the National Digital Newspaper Program’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in September.
The project focused on tracing the origin of the word “Hoosier,” a common moniker used for residents of the state of Indiana. The team developed a website that maps the geographic distribution of the term “Hoosier” along with the frequency with which the term appears in historic newspapers. The website also features a word cloud visualization tool highlighting the frequency of other terms in context to the word “Hoosier.”
The Chronicling America data set was used as the primary source for this project. The database was originally created through a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress and provides free digital access to over 11 million pages of historically significant newspapers published in the United States.