Environmental History:About the Project:

Creating a Virtual Resource Collection on New York State's Environmental History

• Overview

• Summary

• Grant Proposal Narrative

• Outcomes

• Operating Principles

• Partner Information

Overview:

Funded by: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Division of Preservation and Access

Lead Institution: New York State Archives

Partner Institutions: Adirondack Museum, Cornell University, New York State Library, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and Warren and Ulster County governments

Project Time: October 2002 - September 2005

NEH Funds: $260,628 (Participant cost share:$309,784)

Summary:

The project focused on a pivotal facet of America's environmental history: the Adirondack and Catskill Parks. Partner holdings were integrated into a virtual collection that

• Takes a thematic approach thematic rather than an institutional approach

• Unifies geographically distributed collections

• Provides balance to different perspectives on enviromental history

• Employs an integrated approach to web-accessible access tools, ranging from a traditional Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) to a union database of EAD–encoded finding aids, and digitized reproductions of archival material.

Outcomes:

• Developed and/or revise descriptive tools for a 162 collections relating to the Adirondack and Catskill Parks from seven partner institutions.

• Created encoded finding aids and provided links between US MARC records, finding aids and digitized images.

• Provided Web access to over 3200 historical maps, photographs, documents, and graphic materials of high interest drawn from partners' collections.

• Developed a common method for creating electronic finding aids and mounting them on the Web

• Developed shared guidelines and best practices for finding aid content, EAD markup, and item digitization that will help other New York State repositories

• Developed the necessary infrastructure for housing the finding aids and making them available

• Laid the foundation for the future growth of this and other topical sites on New York State history

• Built a rich research resource for historians, geographers, educators and other humanities scholars

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