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Connecticut History Online (CHO) is a digital collection of over 15,000 digital primary sources, together with associated interpretive and educational material. Now in its tenth year, CHO is embarking on a collaboration with the Encyclopedia of Connecticut History Online (ECHO) to serve the needs of scholars, K-12 and post-secondary teachers and students, genealogists, and the general public. This new initiative builds upon a very successful collaboration of libraries and museums carried out in two IMLS National Leadership grant-funded phases (1999-2007) that focused on digital capture of historical artifacts, including photographs, maps, broadsides, oral histories, manuscripts and oral histories. These document events, people, and places that are part of the fabric of Connecticut and American social, business, political, educational, cultural, and civic life.
The four current CHO partners, the Connecticut Historical Society, Connecticut State Library, Mystic Seaport, and the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center represent three major communities – libraries, museums, and historical societies – who preserve and make accessible historical collections within the state of Connecticut. Their combined assets include book and periodical volumes, manuscript materials, photographs and graphics, oral histories, maps, artifacts, and broadsides.
Drawing on the rich collections of the sponsoring institutions, and of new contributing cultural heritage organizations, Connecticut History Online will provide a repository of digital primary sources that will complement and illustrate the authoritative essays, articles and entries in ECHO.
There will be several modes of access to Connecticut History Online:
1. The materials can be searched by keyword and advanced keyword searches by subject, creator, place name, institution, format and title.
2. Materials can also be browsed and searched using the unique GeoLocator that allows the user to view a map of Connecticut and seek materials from a particular area or city. The feature allows the user to continually narrow or widen the search of the map getting into finite detail of towns and other geographic features.
3. Materials can also be found through the use of defined searches entitled “Journeys” that allow the user to review material related to a pre-defined topic that places the material into an historical context.
4.Links from ECHO articles, essays and entries.
CHO will continue to build a repository that can be used by diverse audiences, with the added benefit the collaboration with ECHO affords. These complementary projects will together provide substantive and engaging resources for gaining understanding of the history of Connecticut and of the nation.
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