A University of Worcester historian's work to preserve slavery records is featured in a British Library display.
Professor Suzanne Schwarz, a history lecturer, has been leading a team to digitise endangered documents held in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
These records are of global importance to the history of slavery and are now preserved in digital format for future generations.
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Professor Schwarz said: "This work is of global significance to the history of slavery."
Her work, in collaboration with the Sierra Leone Public Archives, is already providing new insights into the lives of those released from slavery.
The project is one of 15 funded by the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), run by the British Library, now on display at the London-based library until February.
Professor Schwarz explained how, after the British abolition of the trade in 1807, Royal Navy ships intercepted slave ships, resulting in an estimated 100,000 enslaved Africans being disembarked at Freetown.
Their details were recorded in registers.
Professor Schwarz said: "The significance of the evidence we’re digitising is that it reveals information on the people originally intended for enslavement in the Americas.
"Even though Royal Navy ships released only a small proportion of those transported in the trade in the 19th century, we can still learn more about the people uprooted and displaced in the transatlantic slave trade.”
Professor Schwarz is the principal investigator on the project, with two of the university’s PhD students also involved.
She said that over the years, the archives had suffered from damp and humidity, putting the documents in a perilous state.
Through the EAP initiative, it has been possible to provide specialist training and equipment for Sierra Leonean archivists to undertake the digitisation of the source material.
The growing collection of digital material is freely available through the EAP website (eap.bl.uk) and archival partners.
Registers of Liberated Africans started to be kept in Sierra Leone in 1808.
They include the African names of those released together with details of their estimated age, height, sex, and aspects of their physical appearance.
Professor Schwarz said: "The names are particularly significant."
She added that the Sierra Leone records include the first groups of enslaved Africans released in 1808.
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