Robert L. Taylor
Director, Academic Technologies
Northwestern University
William R. Parod
Architect for Scholarly Technologies
Northwestern University
Sarah Marcus
Digital Projects Manager
Chicago Historical Society
In May of 2005, three partner institutions — The Chicago Historical Society, The Newberry Library, and Northwestern University — released the on-line Encyclopedia of Chicago. Over three years in the making, the Encyclopedia’s bloodline is with the print publication that was published six months earlier, and its pulse beats with historians who are seeking to make the Web a home for scholarship. This presentation will (1) reflect upon the challenges and opportunities of inter-institutional development of the Encyclopedia; (2) describe the collections-based architecture that was developed for the Encyclopedia with the FEDORA repository system and mostly open-source components; (3) demonstrate the Flash technologies and image server tools which were standardized upon for the user interface; and (4) observe how the Encyclopedia relates to near-term redevelopment plans of the Chicago Historical Society.