Buchanan Fellow Yisu Yang shares research findings on Vanderbilt’s first students

Learning the curatorial process includes many skills, especially ways to visualize data from primary sources. This past fall, Buchanan Library Fellow Yisu Yang researched the first students at the then-new Vanderbilt University. Using mapping tool Arg-GIS, Yisu developed a five-layered map of Vanderbilt undergraduates before 1885 with 689 data points.  Yisu’s map, in the exhibit Taking Root: Vanderbilt University’s First Decade, 1875 – 1885, shows student’s majors, their hometowns and schools. The all-male student body hailed from Tennessee and the southeast, and some students enrolled from New York, California, Texas and Maryland.

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