Welcome to the future home of the Encyclopedia of Alabama. Click here to view the demonstration site. The site is still being prepared for its public launch, so please have patience if there are technical problems.

 

EOA will be a comprehensive online reference work on the state’s history, culture, geography, and natural environment. The project is being developed through a partnership of the Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University.

Scheduled for launch in mid 2008, EOA will offer original articles enhanced with photography, video, audio, and graphics, all available at no cost to the user and accessible from any computer with an Internet connection. This interactive and multimedia tool will serve a wide audience—students, teachers, business leaders, tourists, scholars, and journalists, among others—seeking information on Alabama’s people and places. EOA will celebrate both the famous and the little-known treasures to be found in the state. It will also address honestly the times and circumstances in which Alabamians faced conflict and struggles.

An interactive exploration of all things Alabama

EOA’s initial launch will include approximately 500 articles on topics of local, state, and national significance. These articles will be well researched and carefully checked for accuracy. Dynamic and virtually boundless, the site will add hundreds of articles per year well into the future. EOA’s consulting editors and staff have already identified more than 5,000 potential entries.

Visitors will find a mix of contemporary and historical entries in the 12 major content areas:

Alabama's achievements in agriculture, medical research, space exploration, the arts, and scores of other areas will be documented in a single reference work unlike any other. There will be articles on Alabamians who helped send men to the moon, developed vascular surgery, made catfish farming a major industry, and eradicated yellow fever.

Readers will find accounts of civil rights marches as well as Civil War engagements, as well as profiles of Fortune 500 companies and historic small businesses. The state’s archeological treasures, geographic features, and vast biological diversity will also be covered.

Visitors interested in Alabama’s influence on the nation’s music history will find entries on country, jazz, gospel, blues, and pop legends who hailed from the state. Alabama’s affinity for college football and NASCAR will figure prominently in the section on Sports & Recreation, but EOA will also provide entries on the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo, baseball teams sponsored by industries, and Olympians from the state.

In addition to profiles of the state’s governors, Creek Indian tribal leaders, and world-renowned authors, scientists, and artists, EOA will provide information on architects and engineers, nurses, sharecroppers, preachers, journalists, librarians, soldiers, missionaries, and lawyers.

We hope you will explore the links on this page to learn more about EOA: the organizations and individuals involved; the varied audiences that will benefit from the project; the powerful, forward-looking technology that will deliver EOA’s contents to users; and opportunities to support the campaign that is funding EOA.