The Encyclopedia of Alabama was the topic of the latest lecture in the Discover Auburn lecture series.
"It is an edited, online reference source on all things Alabama," said Jeff Jakeman, editor and project manager of the encyclopedia at www.encyclopediaofalabama.org, who gave Thursday's lecture. "Everyone talks about collaboration in the new age, and this is really a collaborative project."
Jakeman demonstrated the site's usefulness by pulling up a number of articles on a range of topics, including military trivia, natural history and sports facts.
When the EOA was launched Sept. 15, 2008, it offered only 525 articles.
Today, the encyclopedia contains about 3,300 printed pages, and content is added at a rate of about 300-400 pages, or 120-150 articles, per year.
It also incorporates multimedia, like photos and video.
"Users from Alabama view almost four pages per visit," Jakeman said. "It shows that Alabamians are using this site fairly extensively; however, only 30 percent of our total visits are from Alabama."
Of the 70 percent of visitors from outside the state, 10 percent are international.
The encyclopedia began under the leadership of the Alabama Humanities Foundation and the University of Alabama Press, with initial planning and grant application starting in 2000-2001.
Auburn's contribution came in 2003 when it became the host institution for the internal offices and the technology platform, Jakeman said.
"I want you to know, the EOA is not my project," Jakeman said. "It's not Auburn's project, although it played a very important role in creating the project. It's really Alabama's project. It's a project for the entire state."
Jakeman said his favorite pages are those about natural history.
"Alabama is such a rich state in terms of its environment," he said.
Laura Hill, communications editor for the project, said the encyclopedia can be a beneficial source for everyone because of the range of topics.
"If you want to be someone who can talk to anyone at a cocktail party, start going to the Encyclopedia of Alabama because it gives you something to talk about to almost anyone you meet," Hill said.
A staff of five and one part-time member primarily run the EOA.
Some future focuses for EOA include completing articles of all Alabama's counties and incorporated cities and towns, adding a mobile app and highlighting pages that align with course standards for use by teachers.
Only 17 other states have online state encyclopedias, according to the site.
The Discover Auburn series is presented by the Auburn University libraries, the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities and the AU Bookstore.
The next lecture will feature archival prewar photographs of Afghanistan and the Pakistan frontier by Cornelia Martin.
The lecture will be Nov. 4 at 3 p.m. in the special collections department of the Ralph Brown Draughon library.
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