In May 2004, when the online Encyclopedia of Alabama (EOA) was in its development stage, Claire Wilson was hired as a content editor. She brought to EOA 16 years of national publishing experience, including several years with a peer-reviewed K-12 science education journal. At the time she was hired, Wilson was managing and proofreading submissions for the peer-reviewed quarterly International Journal of Acoustics and Vibration. Wilson guided content development and production for EOA for 22 years, retiring in April 2026.
“Claire arrived at just the right time to help accelerate EOA’s development,” said Steve Murray, the resource’s managing editor from 2002 to 2006. “Our in-house expertise was weighted toward history, which was certainly important but not adequate for creating a comprehensive approach to the state. Claire brought a background in anthropology, experience in editing scientific content and a strong interest in the natural world. These are reflected in EOA’s strength of content across an array of disciplines.”
Wilson’s contributions to Auburn during her years with EOA spanned academic departments and included several student learning outcomes projects. One of the collaborations involved a redesign of a conservation biology course assignment in the College of Science and Math. The objective was to develop students’ skills in communicating scientific knowledge to a range of audiences and in a variety of genres. She worked with a biological sciences faculty member to guide students through adapting their 5,000-word webpage assignments on threatened and endangered plants and animals into a 1,000-word article for potential publication in EOA. In addition to editing, Wilson wrote more than one hundred articles for EOA, ranging in topics from artist Pinky Bass to the McCurdy Plantation Horse.
Wilson’s expertise benefited multiple organizations. During Alabama’s state bicentennial celebration, she worked closely with producers from Alabama Public Television to create its series of videos titled Alabama Legacy Moments. For several years, Wilson was also a regular volunteer at the Auburn University Museum of Natural History, exercising her talent for organizing bags of collected fossils—including many turtle parts and shark teeth—by time and type of creature. She also frequently volunteers in support of education and arts programs at the Louise Kreher Forest Ecology Preserve.
During Wilson’s tenure at EOA, its content earned high respect as the state’s premier online reference resource covering Alabama’s history, culture, and natural environment. The quality of the more than 2,630 entries currently found on EOA, plus the thousands of enhancing visuals that accompany them, reflects her commitment to publishing credible, readable and attractive content for a global audience.
“Underlying all of Claire’s contributions,” Murray said,” has been an unwavering curiosity about people, places, natural resources, traditions, technology and society—all the things that make Alabama such a fascinating topic of study. Editors who are curious produce reference works that serve the curiosity of readers. We can all be grateful for Claire’s contributions to learning by generations of us.”
