Are you ready? It’s time to unveil the brackets for Junto March Madness 2019.

This year, the tournament focuses on digital history projects relating to Vast Early America. Readers nominated an excellent field of digital projects, including venerable favorites and young scrappy upstarts.

Voting will begin this week in separate posts.

A couple of quick notes:

• We broke these projects into eight brackets based primarily on what kind of digital work they represent. This was not so easy. A number of these digital projects do more than one thing. Some of them defy categorization altogether. Some categories had to be crunched together to make the numbers work. If you think that a given project belongs in another category, you’re probably right! But give us a break, we did the best we could.
• The seeding is based first of all on the number of nominations and seconds that a project garnered. But it’s also based on our expectations for how well each project will do, and our desire to create interesting matchups.
• Remember that this is supposed to be fun! Each of these projects represents an incredible amount of intellectual, creative, and technical labor, and they all deserve recognition. Our goal with this tournament isn’t to choose the “best” digital project, but to identify some of our favorites.
• Discuss! Which project are you rooting for? Have you used these in the past? Are you just learning about something useful? Let us know in the comments section or on Twitter using the hashtag #JMM19.

Bracket one: Teaching resources & podcasts

• 1. Ben Franklin’s World v. 8. Thomas Jefferson Hour
• 2. Age of Jackson v. 7. Constitutionally Speaking
• 3. MHS Classroom and Online Resources v. 6. O Say Can You See?
• 4. Raid on Deerfield v. 5. La Florida

Bracket two: Empire and Founding Documents

• 1. Yale Indian Papers Project v. 8. Townshend Family Papers
• 2. Georgian Papers Programme v. 7. Occom Circle Project
• 3. Southeastern Native American Documents v. 6. Interactive Constitution
• 4. American Notes v. 5. Haiti and the Atlantic World

Bracket three: Data Visualizations and Geospatial Projects

• 1. Slave Voyages v. 8. Globalization of the United States, 1789–1861
• 2. Slave Revolt in Jamaica v. 7. Magazine of Early American Datasets
• 3. Indian Nation v. 6. Oak of Jersualem
• 4. Native Land v. 5. New Map of Empire Atlas

Bracket four: Blogs and online publications

• 1. Black Perspectives v. 8. Bunk History
• 2. Age of Revolutions v. 7. Boston 1775
• 3. Borealia v. 6. Nehri, Chef des Haytiens
• 4. Common-place v. 5. Adverts 250

Bracket five: Digital archives

• 1. Documenting the American South v. 8. American Indian Treaties Portal
• 2. Harvard – Colonial North America v. 7. Georgetown Slavery Archive
• 3. Colonial Albany v. 6. St. Louis Circuit Court Records Project
• 4. Boston Public Library Anti-Slavery Manuscripts v. 5. New York Heritage Digital Collections

Bracket six: Newspapers and ephemera

• 1. Freedom on the Move v. 8. Newburyport, Massachusetts Library Newspapers
• 2. North Carolina Runaway Slave Advertisements v. 7. Annotated Newspapers of Harbottle Dorr
• 3. La Gazette Royale d’Hayti v. 6. City Readers
• 4. Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballots v. 5. Virginia Gazette collection

Bracket seven: Transcription and web projects

• 1. War Department Papers v. 8. Quill
• 2. Colored Conventions v. 7. New England Hidden Histories
• 3. Musical Passage v. 6. Moravian Soundscapes
• 4. Salem Witch Trials Papers v. 5. Anna

Bracket eight: Digital Editions

• 1. Founders Online v. 8. Hymn Tune Index
• 2. Digital Paxton v. 7. American Archive
• 3. Common Sense Digital Edition v. 6. Sounding Spirit
• 4. Joseph Smith Papers v. 5. Avalon Project