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Return of the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable

Posted on March 3, 2019 by curator

Many will recall the program series that launched The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia — the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable. This spring we are pleased to again invite you to a series of conversations about our region’s history and contemporary issues.

Sanctuaries: Past Into Present

Throughout American history, people have come to the Philadelphia region seeking opportunity, while others have been fleeing persecution, and still others have been forced here in chains. When have these migrants been granted the right to feel safe, and when have they been denied safety? How do we come to grips with our country’s contradictory history of celebrating the diversity these many migrations produced, while denying rights to many?

This spring, join friends and neighbors for a series of free public seminars across greater Philadelphia. Learn from local experts about Philadelphia’s immigration and migration history, hear from activists working in the region now, and grapple with how our complicated histories shape today’s social and political landscape.

In Search of the Underground Railroad: Connecting People, Places, and Things
April 2, 2019
Pop-Up Exhibits at 6 p.m., Lecture at 7 p.m.
Rutgers-Camden Campus Center
Featuring archaeologist Cheryl LaRoche and community partners.

Discover how historians and archaeologists connect people, places, and things to better understand the lives of enslaved people who sought sanctuary with the Underground Railroad. Link for further information and registration.

Sanctuary Now, Sanctuary When?
April 23, 2019, 6 p.m.
Arch Street Meeting House
320 Arch Street, Philadelphia
Featuring Domenic Vitiello (University of Pennsylvania) and Blanca Pacheco (New Sanctuary Movement)

Learn how the idea of “sanctuary” became part of immigration justice lexicon in the United States and what we can all learn from the experiences of refugees and activists, past and present. Link for further information and registration.

Sanctuary in Sickness, Sanctuary in Health
June 4, 2019, 6 p.m.
Philadelphia Lazaretto
Second Street and Wanamaker Avenue, Essington, Pa.
Featuring David Barnes (University of Pennsylvania)

Explore the Philadelphia Lazaretto, discover the critical role it played in Philadelphia’s immigration history, and contemplate the past, present, and future of health care for our most vulnerable. Link for further information and registration.

Sanctuaries: Past into Present is a Greater Philadelphia Roundtable program series of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, produced at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden. “In Search of the Underground Railroad” is supported by the Office of the Chancellor at Rutgers-Camden and co-sponsored by the following departments and programs: History, Africana Studies, Liberal Studies, and Forensic Science.

Revolutionary Delaware: Independence in the First State – New Book by Encyclopedia Contributor

Posted on December 16, 2016 by curator

The American Revolution in Delaware is the subject of a new book by Kim Rogers Burdick, who also is the author of the essay about the gunpowder industry in The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. According to the History Press, the publisher of Revolutionary Delaware: Independence in the First State:

In 1776, Delaware declared independence from both England and Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Three Lower Counties of Pennsylvania, the First State was instrumental in the fight to form a new republic. The Marquis de Lafayette, Nathanael Greene and George Washington all made trips to the state. Caesar Rodney’s ride and the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge are legendary, but the state has many unsung heroes. Citizens from every village, town, crossroads and marsh risked their lives to support their beliefs. Author Kim Burdick offers the carefully documented story of ordinary people coping with extraordinary circumstances.

Kim Burdick will speak and sign copies of her book on Saturday, December 17, at 10:30 a.m. at the Kirkwood Library, 6000 Kirkwood Highway, Wilmington, Delaware.

SEPTA’s Latest Crisis

Posted on April 18, 2025 by curator

One of SEPTA's Regional Rail trains crosses the Schuylkill River. — Pictured here, one of SEPTA’s Regional Rail trains crosses the Schuylkill River near the Girard Avenue Bridge on its way from the far reaches of the city into 30th Street Station and the Center City train stations (photograph by Donald G. Groff for the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia).

Recently, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) announced that it would be forced to dramatically cut service and raise fares because of a $213 million deficit in next year’s budget (which begins on July 1, 2025). Proposed changes include the elimination of fifty bus routes, five regional rail lines and one metro line, a 20 percent reduction in service and the elimination of all services after 9PM on the surviving regional rail and metro lines, and a 20 percent reduction in service on surviving bus lines. This announcement had the effect that SEPTA likely sought: outrage and shock over the proposed cutbacks and demands that the state find the needed funds.

As a scholar who studies the history of public transportation, I was neither shocked nor surprised by the deficit or the proposed service cuts and fare increases. SEPTA has been inadequately funded through most of its history and this issue has only become worse in the twenty-first century. My entry on the history of SEPTA for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia concluded that “From its founding, SEPTA [has] struggled with structural, funding, and management issues [and t]hese issues, along with the growth of reverse commuting and labor strife, continued to challenge SEPTA and its riders in the early twenty-first century.” From the 1980s onward, Pennsylvania has focused on largely short-term solutions to these issues.

The current funding crisis dates to the summer of 2024. At that time SEPTA warned of dramatic service cuts and fare increases, prompting Governor Josh Shapiro to propose an increase in funding for the transit authority. After the Pennsylvania legislature refused to pass the requested increase, Shapiro, in what he termed a “stopgap measure,” transferred $153 million in state highway funds to SEPTA. Nothing has changed over the last year and, due to federal funding cuts, Shapiro likely no longer has a magic pot of cash from which he can recreate last year’s miracle.

SEPTA’s funding problems are not unique to it or other transit providers in the Commonwealth, as Pennsylvania does not adequately fund any form of transportation. Although the political battle in Harrisburg is often characterized as one between rural Republicans who want highway money and urban Democrats who want transit funding, the state actually doesn’t fund either of these areas at adequate levels. Poorly funded transportation infrastructure is not just a Pennsylvania problem, however, as unsafe roads and bridges are common throughout the United States. A decade ago, Pennsylvania had the highest percentage of structurally deficient bridges of any state, but Shapiro and the legislature increased highway funding in 2023-2024 and this has allowed the state to make progress in that area. What Pennsylvania needs is a similar consensus on mass transit.

A key part of SEPTA’s problem, however, is the public perception that the general manager and the board are politicians and not transportation experts capable of dealing effectively with the challenges at hand. With recent disasters like the painful implementation of the Key transit card program and the delayed introduction of the “bus revolution” it’s easy to see how people form this impression. It is worth noting, however, that the desire to save money motivated SEPTA to do both of these projects in-house rather that use an existing (and proven) transit payment system and to hire an established consultant to revise the bus routes.

Arguably SEPTA needs leadership that has politically savvy people at the top who can work with City Hall, Harrisburg and Washington on acquiring a stable funding base and a mid-level management who know how to run buses, trolleys and trains. It is worth recalling that one of SEPTA’s greatest crises was its truly disastrous takeover of the direct operation of the regional rail network in 1983 when David Gunn was general manager. Gunn was midway into his over forty- year career when he worked in Philadelphia and was acknowledged as one of North America’s greatest transit experts. A shutdown of the commuter rail system, followed by the longest strike in SEPTA’s history, caused such a massive decline in ridership that it took over twenty years for the system to recover. So, perhaps transportation expertise at the most senior levels can be overrated.

What SEPTA, its riders, and all users of transportation infrastructure really need are politicians in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Washington who are less interested in sound bites and press conferences and are more concerned with sustaining a transportation system essential to the regional economy. This is a truly existential crisis for SEPTA, as, if the proposed cuts go through, it is difficult to see any justification for SEPTA’s continued existence. Eliminating effectively half of the suburban rail network (and all service after 9 PM) and most suburban bus lines, will leave greater Philadelphia with less regional, cross-county service than existed even before SEPTA was created. Such a setback to the region’s evolving integration in such sectors as healthcare and research would be deeply damaging in lost revenue not just locally but to the state budget itself.

John Hepp is Professor of History Emeritus at Wilkes University and his focus is urban cultural history in the period 1600 to the present. He is a regular rider of SEPTA’s Cynwyd Line, a six-mile-long regional rail line with a total of seven trips a day.

Shopping in Greater Philadelphia

Posted on February 26, 2025 by Howard Gillette

Wanamakers Department Store interior showing historic organ located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wanamaker’s department store was the first department store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the first department stores in the United States.

The closing of downtown Philadelphia’s last department store and the collapse of plans to locate the 76er’s arena on east Market Street have opened major questions, not just about the future of Market Street East but about the role of the city’s core more broadly.

Historically, department stores played a major role in anchoring the region. As population growth accelerated outside the city proper, rail transit connected burgeoning suburbs with the city core, where Philadelphia’s “Big Six” department stores offered not just a vast array of merchandise, but unparalleled opportunities to mix with fellow citizens, enjoy fine dining, and participate in civic rituals. Undoubtedly, Wanamaker’s epitomized the civic element of shopping with its grand court and massive organ offering hugely popular concerts. Appropriately, the 1911 store was designed by Daniel Burnam, whose 1909 Chicago plan epitomized what I have called “civitas by design”—using the built environment as a means of enhancing “the community of citizens.”

As decentralization accelerated in the twentieth century, especially under the influence of the automobile, downtown stores attempted to reach customers where they were by opening branch operations. Strawbridge & Clothier led the way, opening at Suburban Square in Ardmore in 1930 and just outside Jenkintown on Old York Road in 1931. By mid-century, however, a whole different variation of the shopping experience emerged in the form of regional shopping centers. Taking advantage of an expanded highway network making shopping accessible to patrons from multiple jurisdictions, the new commercial structures offered a great deal of that civic sociability once associated with downtown department stores. As a pioneer in the genre and developer of the Cherry Hill Mall, opened in 1961 in Camden County, New Jersey, James Rouse liked to describe such centers as maintaining all the best features of the city core, without its attendant nuisances. Like downtown stores before them, these centers, which emerged throughout the region, offered a range of social opportunities, including fashion shows, a variety of dining options, and opportunities to celebrate national holidays and other civic rituals. In addition to affording social encounters with fellow citizens, such spaces became a preferred location for social gatherings. A number of former Camden residents who left the city after the upheaval of the early 1970s, for instance, met for years at the Cherry Hill Mall.

photograph of Ardmore Strawbridge & Clothier — The Strawbridge and Clothier in Ardmore opened to the public in 1930 and was one of the first department stores to open a branch in the suburbs of Philadelphia. (Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries)

More recently, as the Internet has undermined bricks and mortar stores, the nature of shopping has changed. As individual consumers go online, they encounter neither the salespeople that once guided them to a purchase nor fellow shoppers, whether known or unknown to them. As habits shifted, shopping malls had to adapt in order to survive. While some followed their downtown predecessors by going out of business, others adjusted by incorporating new uses: medical or civic facilities, hotels, housing, and even sports facilities. Such adaptive uses have staved off the extinction of the building type but left the future of such facilities very much in question.

The same could be said for downtown shopping, as evidenced especially by the Gallery at Market Street East, as the development was marketed when it opened in 1977. Heralded for bringing the best of the suburbs (without its attendant nuisance) back to the city, the experiment never really took off. Plopping the 76ers arena down next to its latest iteration as the Fashion District looked a bit like suburban efforts to enliven shopping districts through the attraction of sports. But because professional games have only a limited schedule, the effect would have been limited. The right mix of intended uses could bring life back to the area, while at the same time helping stitch together nearby elements in ways that could help re-establish the area as a central heart to the region.

As Inquirer columnist Inga Saffron reports, the area already is following one lead from refurnished suburban shopping centers by attracting a mix of accessible recreational activities: paintball courses, Formula 1 simulators, arcade games, and indoor bounce houses for kids located into the spaces once occupied by clothing and furniture retailers. These complement other similar newcomers such as Puttshack, at the Shops at Liberty Place on Chestnut Street.

Such investments could help make downtown a desirable destination for more than just the casual visitor. To succeed, however, planners will need to envision a district that moves beyond novelty to enrichment, and here the area’s position between the soon-to-be-reopened Franklin Square SEPTA terminal and Chinatown to the north and the historic district to the south opens new opportunities for blending education and civic celebration with leisure activities. It’s a combination that makes it possible to imagine something so central to a wide range of area residents as well as tourists as to bring back memories of the importance of department stores like Wanamaker’s.

Spotlight on Children’s Television

Posted on May 1, 2012 by cmires

This week our Children’s Television essay is featured by Rutgers Media Relations in a news release by Ed Moorehouse. The article calls attention to the Rutgers-Camden connections of the two authors, Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic of the Robeson Library and the Ph.D. program in Childhood Studies, and Brandi Scardilli, who earned her M.A. from the Rutgers-Camden Department of History. In the interview, the essay authors also comment on children’s television programming today. Update: Listen to Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic discuss her research on WHYY-FM, broadcast May 9, 2012.

Support from Rutgers-Camden Digital Studies Center

Posted on April 16, 2014 by curator

We’re pleased to share the news of new support for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia project from the Digital Studies Center at Rutgers-Camden. This grant will allow us to improve and expand our bibliographic survey by migrating it to Zotero, a platform that will make the citations more user-friendly and accessible to the public. Watch our Sources page for this transformation by the end of the summer.

Support from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council

Posted on January 22, 2010 by curator

A newly-awarded grant from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council will allow us to launch the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable, a series of public forums for dialogue that will help shape the contents of the Encyclopedia. The first sessions of the roundtable, beginning in March, will respond to suggestions received on this web site and at our Civic Partnership and Planning Workshop last year. See our Events calendar for details of the first three roundtables, and watch for an additional session that is being planned on African American history. Each session will feature new research, lively discussion, and the opportunity to contribute ideas for Encyclopedia topics.

Thank You for Helping Us Grow!

Posted on March 21, 2022 by curator

Sincere thanks to all who contributed to our one-day fundraiser on Rutgers Giving Day, March 23, 2022. Your generosity will enable more than 250 hours of employment for students who gain valuable skills at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) as they do fact-checking, illustrations research, and digital publishing for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. We appreciate your support!

Thank you for supporting our “Backgrounder” proposal in the Knight News Challenge

Posted on March 30, 2012 by cmires

When we asked our friends and partners to support us in the Knight News Challenge, you responded – thank you! Our online “likes” doubled in just two days, and we concluded the competition period with 194 “likes” and 92 comments on our proposal. While the competition urged us to focus on the quantity of participation, we are especially pleased by the quality of the online discussion, which demonstrated support while also posing good questions and offering additional ideas. The winners of this funding from the Knight Foundation will be announced in June.

Thank You for Supporting the Encyclopedia Builders!

Posted on March 27, 2018 by curator

On March 21 during Rutgers Giving Day, scholars, students, community members, and staff came together to support The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, produced by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden.

The dedication of all who donated and promoted our cause through social media is truly inspiring. Your generous contributions will be used to employ the students who help to make digital publication of The Encyclopedia possible. Keep an eye on our website or like us on Facebook to watch our essay collection grow!

We are so grateful for the opportunity to continue producing original scholarship and making it accessible to readers like you. Thank you!

P.S. Missed your chance to donate on Giving Day? Make a gift to support The Encyclopedia today!

Thank You for Supporting us in the News Challenge

Posted on April 12, 2012 by cmires

We were so grateful and impressed by your expressions of support for our application in the Knight News Challenge. We have learned that our proposal will not be advancing to the next round of the competition — in all, more than 1,100 applications were submitted and all but 51 were eliminated in the first round of screening. Although we are disappointed, we are glad for the positive developments that emerged from our collective effort. We have attracted new, enthusiastic potential partners for the future, and we have more than 200 followers for the @Backgrounders Twitter feed that we started for connecting history with the news. We will continue to use this to serve the public and add value to the Encyclopedia project. To follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Backgrounders. To see the projects advancing to further consideration in the Knight News Challenge, and comments about the selection process, follow this link: http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/20962258701/knight-news-challenge-on-networks-moving-to-the-next.

The contested path of the Sixers arena

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Howard Gillette

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of occasional blogs connecting contemporary issues with Greater Philadelphia’s storied history as documented in the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Underlying these posts is the question whether we have learned sufficiently from the past to make the right decisions going forward.

Image depicts the original plan for the ’76ers stadium intended to be built in Market Street East. (Photo courtesy of phlsportsnation)

In the effort to identify regional connections between Philadelphia and the surrounding areas, Carolyn Adams and I found that nothing brought our area’s diverse people together across multiple counties in three states so much as professional sports. “The fact that thousands of avid sports fans from the suburbs poured into South Philadelphia for every home game fostered their identification with the rest of the region as perhaps no other activity could,” Adams concludes the overview chapter to our forthcoming book, The Greater Philadelphia Region. With the decision in the past few days to construct a new combined stadium for the ‘76ers and Flyers in the existing stadium district, that element of identity is only going to deepen. Whether one agrees with that decision or not, the winding and contested path to that decision raises serious questions both about the process and its ultimate resolution.

The Inquirer’s Helen Ubinas is not the only observer who thinks city interests proved secondary to profit-making throughout the two years of negotiations that took place. From the start, the plan to make over part of Market Street East came not from planners or government officials, but from an aggressive real estate developer and part owner of the 76ers. As it had in the past—most notably in the failed effort to stop the Vine Street Expressway—the Chinatown community, with the most to lose, reacted vehemently against the proposal. Other nearby communities also opposed the move, which would have brought street traffic, congestion, and noise on game days and only questionable benefits on other days. Only belatedly, it became clear that peak attendance would overwhelm SEPTA without additional financial resources, which the team was unwilling to commit to in months of negotiations.

No doubt that part of downtown needed assistance. Hopes for the original Gallery Place at Market East project designed by the famed developer, James Rouse, never materialized, and its makeover as the “Fashion District” also faltered. There was a rationale for replacing part of that project with a stadium, but it was not one that followed from a planning process for the whole area. Ideally, city officials would have followed the approach it embraced for reconnecting the city to the waterfront, through a public planning process, greatly assisted by Penn Praxis’s executive director Harris Steinberg. Now the director of the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel, Steinberg weighed in on the 76s plan in a general sense by suggesting the location follow a less invasive course, citing a block across Market at Eleventh as a model. Other downtown locations were suggested but never seriously entertained during the course of debate.

One could well argue that an alternative downtown location could have helped the city, without destroying a vulnerable neighborhood nearby as the Capital Arena in Washington did in totally overwhelming its adjacent Chinatown. One might look to Detroit, for example. Instead, the 76ers, in partnership with Comcast, will now build a new arena in South Philadelphia as part of a much larger makeover of the sports complex, bringing new housing and retail to an area currently devoid of character and animation outside of the stadiums, with the single exception of the nearby casino. What these billionaire partners have in mind is something like the entertainment and sports complex Battery Atlanta.

Revitalizing the existing sports complex will undoubtedly boost city taxes over time, while removing the political costs of potentially destroying a valued neighborhood. But there are downsides as well. The South Philadelphia location remains remote from the city core, forcing primary reliance on auto traffic, without the compensating effect of spillover business from sports events for a struggling downtown. With the simultaneous loss of the downtown’s last major department store, Market Street has been further damaged. While city officials speak optimistically about refiguring the historic Wanamaker building in the wake of Macy’s closure as part of an alternate plan for Market Street East, those ideas remain vague so far. One can only hope that the next steps incorporate a participatory and professional planning process that will enhance, rather than continue to weaken the core at the heart of the region.

Howard Gillette
Contributing Editor

The Greater Philadelphia Roundtable

Posted on May 16, 2010 by curator

Our spring series of the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable concluded May 11 with a capacity audience at the African American Museum in Philadelphia for “Philadelphia’s Black Attorneys: Not Just Lawyers but ‘Social Engineers.'” We extend to thanks to everyone who contributed their time and efforts to these community dialogues, which collectively drew more than 300 participants to four different venues and generated lively exchanges of information and views. These programs have demonstrated the strong interest of a variety of individuals and groups in being represented in The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. We also have heard of the importance of understanding the past in order to plan for the future, especially the need to reach out to today’s youth. The extraordinary collaboration among so many groups and individuals forged by these programs will guide the planning of future programs and help to shape the future content of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Please continue to join the dialogue as we post summaries of the spring discussions and watch for announcements of future events.

The Greater Philadelphia Roundtable: LGBT Activism

Posted on March 19, 2010 by curator

Our new initiative for civic dialogue, the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable, began this week with a gathering at the William Way Community Center for a panel, “Striving for Equality: LGBT Activism in Greater Philadelphia.” The discussion highlighted the generations of activism necessary to achieve goals such as the Philadelphia civil rights bill and the Pennsylvania hate crimes bill. By understanding the connections that advocates for LGBT rights have forged between Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Washington, we gained insight into Philadelphia’s impact in the state and nation. We discussed the importance of visibility for LGBT people in Philadelphia’s history and the prospects for continuing conversation and future collaborations with the Encyclopedia project. We thank the participants and many cosponsors of this event, especially facilitator Kathy Padilla for organizing the panel. Thanks also to Professor William Hewitt of West Chester University for stepping in as speaker to discuss the life and legacy of Bayard Rustin. Topics submitted on comment cards have been posted on our nominations page , and a more detailed summary of the event will be posted soon to allow the conversation to continue.

The Greater Philadelphia Roundtable is supported in part by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People initiative for American history.

The Rise of the Market City — Event Featuring Encyclopedia Contributor

Posted on January 10, 2017 by curator

The first event of the spring semester for Penn Urban Studies will feature a talk by Timothy P.R. Weaver, the author of the essay about Enterprise Zones and Empowerment Zones in The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Weaver, who is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, will speak about his book, Blazing the Neoliberal Trail: Urban Political Development in the United States and the United Kingdom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). His talk, titled “The Rise of the Market City: Unfettered Capitalism and Urban Transformation in the U.S. and the U.K.,” will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 19, at the Penn Bookstore, Thirty-Sixth and Walnut Streets, Philadelphia.

The Scribe of Camden

Posted on May 3, 2011 by cmires

Howard Gillette — whose dedication to the Encyclopedia project shaped our vision of a regional information gateway, based in civic engagement — is featured prominently in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. The column by Kevin Riordan focuses on Gillette’s research on the postindustrial history of the City of Camden in addition to his work to promote inclusive public history projects such as the President’s House site in Philadelphia. Read the article.

Tour Guides Join Our Civic Advisory Board

Posted on August 31, 2010 by curator

Earlier this summer, two of the Encyclopedia’s editors, Charlene Mires and Howard Gillette, participated in a meeting of the Association of Philadelphia Tourguides. Building on that fruitful discusison, we now welcome this organization to our growing board of civic partners. Bob Skiba will serve as liaison between the guides and the Encyclopedia.

Update: Our Website Functions

Posted on October 17, 2020 by curator

Frequent users of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia may notice that some features of our website are unavailable or not working properly. The website is undergoing review and maintenance to improve functions and security, so thank you for your patience. You will still be able to read the text for all topics.

If you wish to reach other features, such as texts in image galleries, you may be able to access them through the copy of the website in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200926124637/https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/

Vietnamese Scholars Visit The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia

Posted on November 28, 2017 by curator

The editors, authors, and staff of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia are honored to welcome scholars from Vietnam on November 29. Under the auspices of the Social Science Research Council, the delegation has come to the United States to learn about encyclopedia projects in preparation for producing an Encyclopedia of Vietnam. Read more about the visit on the website of Rutgers-Camden, where The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia is produced.

We’re Augmenting Reality

Posted on February 24, 2011 by cmires

What if you could stand in the present and see the past? It might look something like this. Over the last several months, the Encyclopedia team has been involved in an exciting project with the City of Philadelphia Department of Records and Azavea Inc. to develop an augmented reality app for the lastest generation of smartphones. Read all about it on Azavea’s blog, and get your phones ready for the app in the near future!

We’re in the Knight News Challenge – you can help!

Posted on March 6, 2012 by cmires

We are working on an exciting new project – “Backgrounder,” which will provide journalists with links to historical background information, delivered via Twitter. Working with WHYY, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Temple University Libraries Special Collections Center, we propose to build up news-related content in the Encyclopedia, then provide it to reporters when they need it. We also propose to provide new content related to breaking news, and that will become part of the Encyclopedia as well.

You can help us shape this project and earn funding for it by adding your feedback to the project proposal, which we have just posted in the Knight News Challenge:
http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/18812768763/backgrounder-blasts-from-the-past-for-busy-reporters

You may also follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/#!/Backgrounders

Thank you for your participation in the Encyclopedia project!

Blog Category: Blog, page 4