Encyclopedia of Chicago

May 12, 2005 9:58 AM

The Encyclopedia of Chicago is now online and free, less than a year after being released in book form.
posted by me3dia (19 comments total)

Wow! I'm glad I was too cheap to buy it.
posted by goatdog at 10:05 AM on May 12, 2005

This makes me unbelievably happy. On my last visit home I stopped in to the Historical Society and it was so bizarre to be transported back in time some 25+ years (and ew, how I hate saying that!) to when we used to get taken there on field trips.

Thanks me3dia!
posted by FlamingBore at 10:16 AM on May 12, 2005

This is amazing. I don't think I'll be getting any work done for a while
posted by cmonkey at 10:30 AM on May 12, 2005

YES!
posted by santiagogo at 10:36 AM on May 12, 2005

This is great. Many thanks.
posted by languagehat at 10:54 AM on May 12, 2005

[this is very good]

thanks for the link, me3dia
posted by pardonyou? at 10:54 AM on May 12, 2005

Awww hell...there goes my day...
posted by mrs.pants at 11:10 AM on May 12, 2005

"You appear to be using Opera, which is not supported by the Encyclopedia of Chicago.
Please, visit the User’s Guide for a list of supported browsers."

Well crap.
posted by Capn at 11:12 AM on May 12, 2005

What are some good entries? I know squat about Chicago.
posted by mischief at 11:32 AM on May 12, 2005

mischief, The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was a pretty fascinating event.
posted by pardonyou? at 11:39 AM on May 12, 2005

mischief, here's a couple places to start:
- Folklore
- Columbian Exposition and Centry of Progress Exposition
- Street Life
- Crime & Chicago's Image
- Creation of Chicago Sports
posted by me3dia at 11:48 AM on May 12, 2005

Is it a good or a bad sign that after 2-3 minutes of reading this I thought 'I wish this were a wiki'?
posted by louie at 12:44 PM on May 12, 2005

Great links, thanks.

louie, why not link to it in another wiki?
posted by mischief at 12:50 PM on May 12, 2005

I wonder where the encyclopedia trend is headed. They seem to be getting more specialized and prolific. How about a meta: The Encyclopedia Encyclopedia.. or more obtuse The Dictionary of Encyclopedia
posted by stbalbach at 1:15 PM on May 12, 2005

mischief: because it seems like the whole thing should really just be a section in wikipedia, but of course I can't do that with their copyright.
posted by louie at 2:09 PM on May 12, 2005

Re: Why not a Wiki?

Speaking as someone who knew some people who were involved with the creation of this, it seemed to me that there were some academic-type imperatives to make use of certain imaging technologies in the Encyclopedia i.e. all the historical documents are stored on a server at truly mind-boggling resolutions and scaled/zoomed dynamically as they are served to the browser. It all seemed pretty incredible before I saw Google Maps / Satellite.
posted by idontlikewords at 3:00 PM on May 12, 2005

"all the historical documents are stored on a server at truly mind-boggling resolutions and scaled/zoomed dynamically as they are served to the browser"

This is such a pain in the ass. With today's bandwidth, just serve the entire image and let the user decide how to scale/zoom.
posted by mischief at 8:26 PM on May 12, 2005

Cool, there's even an entry about where I live.
posted by SisterHavana at 9:35 PM on May 12, 2005

Mischief, when we scan images at the archives where I work we store them as 600dpi uncompressed TIFFs. For color 8x10s, that's around 80MB a pop. That's a hell of a download for an image, even with today's bandwidth.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 9:32 AM on May 13, 2005