Chicago History ROCKS!

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I'm like...all proud of my workplace and stuff.

It's FREE! Take a look!

Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago

_Pm

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"Scared of love, love and aeroplanes...falling out, I said takes no brains." -- Andy Partridge (XTC)

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Also, an article from the Chicago Sun-Times about it:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-hist11.html

Vast Encyclopedia of Chicago goes on the Web

May 11, 2005

BY TOM MCNAMEE Staff Reporter

An electronic version of The Encyclopedia of Chicago -- the most comprehensive reference book on the Chicago region ever published -- goes online today, where it is even more extensive.

Better yet, it's free.

When published last fall, the 1,117-page print version of the encyclopedia was widely praised by critics as a stunning scholarly achievement -- a work of gravity, depth and fun.

It featured more than 1,400 entries by more than 600 historians, journalists and other experts, in addition to hundreds of maps and illustrations, a dictionary of Chicago-area businesses, a biographical dictionary and a 21-page timeline.

'Not limited by number of pages'

Now the online version, at www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory .org, adds several hundred more entries, more than 1,000 additional images, video of historic figures and events, and a wealth of primary source material -- personal letters, newspaper articles, artwork, legal documents and the like. A meaty essay on the famously influential Plan of Chicago of 1909, for example, includes a hyperlink to the entire book-length plan. If the online version of the encyclopedia were published as a book, it would run to more than 10,000 pages.

"You're not limited by the number of pages," said Sarah Marcus, a Chicago Historical Society historian who directed the online encyclopedia project. "We were free to add, and we took advantage of that. But we weren't just going around grabbing cool images. Every image has to relate to at least two other elements in the encyclopedia or it doesn't get in. That preserves the links that move you from here to there, and it's those links that really hold the whole thing together. We didn't wany anybody hitting a dead end."

For many readers of the online version of the encyclopedia, half the fun might be stumbling upon the unexpected and unknown while clicking from link to link.

For example, an essay on the "Worlds of Prairie Avenue" -- Chicago's original Gold Coast -- links to an interactive map that shows how Prairie Avenue changed from 1853 to 2003, from rows of mansions for the city's elite to light industry and vacant lots. A second Prairie Avenue map shows who lived in each mansion -- the Fields, Pullmans, Otises and the like. And as you move your mouse over this map, information on each household pops up. Photographs, news articles and letters bring Prairie Avenue to life.

Shows bigotry of the times

Consider this telling 1875 newspaper report on a speech by a Jane G. Jones of Prairie Avenue: It seems Mrs. Jones was convinced that a new breed of Chicago men, which she derisively referred to as "Hans, Sambo and Pat," was no match for the "one perfect man" shaped by nature over thousands of years. Here's proof that at least some of the rich WASP swells on Prairie Avenue were casual bigots disdainful of immigrant Germans ("Hans"), African Americans ("Sambo") and immigrant Irish ("Pat").

Bigotry and racism, of course, have a long tradition in Chicago, as any Potawatomi Indian knows. So it's probably no surprise that when a Sun-Times reporter randomly browsed the online encyclopedia for another few minutes -- this time jumping off at "Goose Island" -- he happened upon another personal letter lamenting the rabble. This letter, from a Harriet Rosa, who lived near Kinzie and Ohio streets in the 1850s, describes the creation of an Irish immigrant "shanty town."

"It was called Shanty Town and well named," she writes. "Alive with children, a few lambs, pigs, chickens, geese and ducks. There was plenty of water for them for a swim and mud holes for the pigs to have a bath in any time. All garbage was thrown out so they had a dandy time eating any time [they] took the notion to eat. That place I can't ever forget. There was plenty of whiskey ..."

Map teaches labor history

A goal of the online encyclopedia, Marcus said, was to make history come to life by packaging highly polished scholarly essays with a rich and colorful collection of original source material. A particularly dramatic example of this, linked to an essay about "Labor Unrest in Chicago," is a map showing the dozens of strikes, marches and clashes in Chicago in the week before the historic Haymarket Affair of 1886. A click on any incident brings up a newspaper article reporting on the event and, for about half the incidents, details about the company involved -- number of employees, hourly wage, whether children were employed, etc. The map drives home the point that the Haymarket Affair was a culmination of labor protests, not an aberration.

The online encyclopedia, which cost slightly less than $1 million to create, is a joint project of the Chicago Historical Society, the Newberry Library and Northwestern University, whose media specialists developed the Web architecture. The encyclopedia's editors are Janice L. Reiff, associate professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles; Ann Durkin Keating, professor of history at North Central College in Naperville; and James R. Grossman, vice president of research and education at the Newberry.

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"Scared of love, love and aeroplanes...falling out, I said takes no brains." -- Andy Partridge (XTC)