Bill North, Professor of History
Bill North, Professor of History

Bill North, Professor of History

This summer, Professor Bill North worked with student researchers Sophia Myers ’21 and Michael Schultz ’22 on a pilot project to develop a new kind of database: a comprehensive and searchable database of translated primary sources about medieval history. Ultimately, they hope this project will empower middle and high school teachers and students, university audiences, and the general public, to engage primary evidence directly, making history more accessible to a larger audience and working to bridge the gap between scholarly and general audiences. As their pilot case, they have chosen the Black Death because of its central importance for the Middle Ages and in the present. Professor North and his student researchers worked on designing a cataloguing system, cataloging source collections, tracing translated sources through scholarly works, and determining what translations are available online. Once this phase is complete, they will consult with Carleton’s digital humanities team to design an online platform for the database, work on further completion of the database, and collaborate with potential users. Once the pilot case is launched, the project may be expanded to include other medieval topics and types of sources.