Kudos to the Chicago Tribune for the July 2 article recognizing some museums’ efforts to attract new audiences in cyberspace. Unfortunately your article missed the Chicago Historical Society’s Web site, www.chicagohistory.org, and the innovative approaches we’ve taken to bring our collection of 20 million treasures to the public.
The Chicago Historical Society was one of the first museums in the nation to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities offered by the Internet; we remain among the top tier of institutions that use current technologies to bring our collections to the public in convenient and accessible forms. For example:
– We established a “flash movie” feature to introduce our Web site, displaying selected artifacts in dynamic digital animation, with accompanying thought-provoking facts.
– Our Web site also includes The History Files–an overview of the top 10 requested topics in Chicago history.
– “Just the ArtiFACTS,” sponsored in collaboration with AT&T, has become a popular teaching tool for teachers and elementary school children, providing in-depth histories of selected artifacts, how they were acquired and their significance to Chicago’s history.
At the Chicago Historical Society we view cyberspace as an essential medium through which to fulfill our mission of collecting, preserving and interpreting the history of our city and our nation.
