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To facilitate access to digitized primary sources and foster digital stewardship among Connecticut cultural institutions
- To work with large and small museums, libraries, archives and other cultural institutions throughout Connecticut to digitize the rich research material contained in their collections
- To facilitate collaboration among cultural organizations to build and share digital collections
- To make digital collections available to the online community through sustainable platforms that support discovery and use
- To support models of authoritative storytelling
- To provide education and training in digital stewardship
- To facilitate access to digital preservation services for Connecticut cultural institutions
Connecticut History Online (CHO) is a digital collection of over 18,000 digital primary sources, together with associated interpretive and educational material. Now in its twelfth year, CHO is continuing to add contributing organizations and new materials as it builds upon a very successful collaboration of libraries and museums carried out in two IMLS National Leadership grant-funded phases (1999-2007) and through support from the Connecticut Humanities Council in the 2007-2011 time period. Our efforts have focused on digital capture of historical artifacts, including photographs, maps, broadsides, paintings, 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 CHO partner and contributing organizations 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 current sponsoring institutions and of new contributing cultural heritage organizations, Connecticut History Online will continue to serve diverse audiences through building a repository of digital primary sources for research and use in telling the stories of our state and its people.
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