Blog Author: curator, page 6

The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia is a project of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities, in cooperation with our numerous civic partners, associate editors, and advisers.  The new mailing address for the project is: The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities,  Department of History, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ  08102.

At the home base of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden, students and recent alumni play important roles in producing each new topic. In the process they gain a deeper understanding of regional history and build skills in digital publishing. Read more about these activities and other public humanities news on the MARCH website.

We’re so pleased by the brisk registration for the Greater Philadelphia Roundtable events in April. Unfortunately, we have already reached the capacity of our room for the roundtable on April 22, “Imagining Philadelphia’s Future,” at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Please add your name to the wait list by visiting our “Events” page, and we’ll let you know if we can accommodate more people. Also, consider joining us for our other roundtables this spring. An added attraction for the roundtable on April 1 is a book-signing for Women of Industry and Reform: Shaping the History of Pennsylvania, 1865-1940, by Marion Roydhouse, published by the Pennsylvania Historical Association.

This month we passed a new milestone in the creation of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia: our 300th topic published online. Published on March 8, topic number 300, “Board of Health (Philadelphia),” by James Higgins, added to our growing category of topics about health and medicine.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank the many contributors, civic partners, and staff members at Rutgers-Camden who are devoting their talents and good will to the service of this resource for the Philadelphia region. Our current phase of expansion is made possible by generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mayor’s Fund for Philadelphia, and Poor Richard’s Charitable Trust.

This week The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia reached and surpassed 400 topics online with the publication of the essay Community Development, by Howard Gillette Jr. and Domenic Vitiello, two of our editors. The continuing growth of this regional resource is made possible by the talents and good will of hundreds of writers, our civic partners, and the staff of editors, fact-checkers, and digital publishers working at our home base at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden. The current phase of expansion is funded by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mayor’s Fund for Philadelphia, and Poor Richard’s Charitable Trust.

The Encyclopedia editors had the opportunity to lead a roundtable discussion about the project at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Historical Association conference, held October 14-16, 2010, at Susquehanna University.  We were pleased to see scholars from so many universities taking interest in the project and contributing their ideas and thoughtful questions.  Thanks to the historians from Penn State, Temple University, Villanova University, Philadelphia University, Millersville University, Lehigh University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere for your participation.   (That was quite a lineup of past presidents of the PHA in the back row!)  Specific topics recommendations received have been added to our nominations list on the home page of this site, and we look forward to receiving more.