The World Wide Web has influenced The Encyclopedia of Chicago from its inception in 1994. As we mapped out the project, we came to realize that the form of the encyclopedia–with its emphasis on multiple pathways through a complex body of knowledge rather than on a single narrative–resembled the structure of the Web. Of course, Web publication also appealed to us for other reasons rooted in our encyclopedic ambitions: by publishing on the internet, we could reach a potentially enormous worldwide audience; we could expand the work's size beyond the limitations defined by a single printed volume; and we could complement narrative and interpretation with audio and video primary sources in addition to text and still images. But the possibilities didn't stop there, for as the project grew, so did the Web; this brave new world soon featured interactive maps, split screens, and zooms. We hope these features will make the Encyclopedia as lively and various a place to visit as the city itself, and tempt readers to explore its back alleys as well as its grand boulevards. But most importantly, we hope that the electronic version of The Encyclopedia of Chicago, like the print version (University of Chicago Press, 2004) will stimulate readers to think differently about Chicago–by walking new paths through its history.

Both versions of the encyclopedia began with two central ideas about urban history. One, a city's history cannot be isolated from its metropolitan context. And two, metropolitan history tells a set of interwoven stories whose elements include places, institutions, groups, activities, and experiences. Indeed "experience" stands at the center: we wanted to understand the links–over time and space–among the experiences of a diverse population spread across a diverse region. Again, the Web provided an intriguing analogy: people experience a large metropolitan area like Chicago only in parts, just as they can only sample the vast body of information on the Web. No one, not regional planners, nor politicians, nor historians, can ever know everything about a city. Rather people know those parts of the city through which their personal roads lead. Because we wanted to help The Encyclopedia of Chicago's readers navigate a broadly metropolitan place and history, the structures of the World Wide Web suggested a method as well as a metaphor. The architecture of the Web–which allows readers to leap seamlessly from topic to topic via links so that their curiosity and their choices shape each experience of the work–became part of the structure of the encyclopedia. So we focused on making links. We chose not to delegate or automate the see alsos or the cross-references; instead, these pathways represented editorial decisions generated by the integrative and metropolitan interpretive agendas. This strategy enabled us to maximize context without sacrificing detail, as events, institutions, individuals, and even topics could appear within broadly cast entries which tell larger stories about Chicago and its people, yet provide the basic information required in a reference work. The links themselves offer interpretive insights into the larger history of the Chicago region by suggesting comparisons with other entries or by showing how a particular entry fits in the context of a more comprehensive topic.

The simultaneous planning of the print and electronic publications has therefore transformed them both, we think for the better. Knowing that we had to squeeze the Chicago metropolitan experience writ large into one print volume forced us to think about economies of organization, prose, and presentation. These imperatives have helped us to avoid the sprawl that can make an electronic publication seem incoherent rather than multivalent. In the other direction, the images we selected for the book were richer because we followed a principle central to Web-based publication: an illustration should always perform multiple functions, should always play a role in various stories. The timeline links key events to corresponding entries, offering still another way for readers to access the Encyclopedia's contents. The pages that highlight select years in Chicago history emerged as print versions of what we anticipated "galleries" might be online. In short, many of the departures we took from the traditional encyclopedic format were directly inspired by our thinking about the digital encyclopedia.

These possibilities have emerged most clearly in two elements that are unique to the electronic version. Interpretive digital essays (IDEs), began as the digital equivalent of the book's interpretive essays–longer pieces that reflect on major topics in urban history, with Chicago as a case study. IDEs embrace subjects that lend themselves to comparison with other cities. They also tell stories that are enhanced by digital technology, both through the addition of digital materials and through hyperlinks to related entries in the Encyclopedia. At this point we offer two IDEs, with the expectation that we will add more over time: Carl Smith's essay on "The Plan of Chicago" incorporates large-scale topical presentations modeled after some of the Chicago Historical Society's previous Web-based projects; Ann Keating's compilation on "Water in Chicago" offers an expansive perspective on a subject that is central to urban life but often is taken for granted. One finds interpretive breadth through topical depth; the other opts for a wide lens from the outset and suggests how an IDE emerges from the range of encyclopedia entries. For most cities, over most of human history, many of the topics integral to this encyclopedia have involved reliance upon water: consider, for example, economy, health, leisure, and development. Water constitutes a resource essential to urban growth, but its very presence on the landscape has been an encumbrance to development. What comes in must be clean; what goes out will not be clean and therefore poses problems of disposal. Users of this encyclopedia can join historians in exploring this broad theme through dozens of individual entries shared with the print version, as well as newly added, heavily illustrated essays and galleries of images.

In addition to IDEs, we added topical galleries to the Encyclopedia. A gallery is an authored piece that consists of a collection of related images or texts accompanied by substantive captions. Galleries complement the entries in the book by adding new illustrative materials or by expanding the geographical or interpretive reach of the Encyclopedia. Like a book entry, each topical gallery provides new historical information on the Chicago region. Like many other Encyclopedia of Chicago entries, galleries place greater emphasis on "lumping" than "splitting" (taking their primary subject as public expressions of religion for example, rather than the evangelism of Billy Sunday or other specific ecumenical endeavors). They address change over time, and they reach beyond Chicago's city limits to a metropolitan framework. Galleries also offer ways of grouping (and thus reinterpreting) illustrations and other historical sources that appear in other contexts in the Encyclopedia. The galleries suggest patterns of connection that readers can explore for themselves throughout the work.

If linkage characterizes how we have thought about metropolitan Chicago as well as how we have constructed the encyclopedia, it also epitomizes the institutional dynamics of the project. The electronic publication of The Encyclopedia of Chicago represents the culmination of an ambitious and unprecedented collaboration. The project began at the Newberry Library, which assumed primary responsibility for the printed book and for the work that provided the foundation for the electronic publication. The agreement between the Newberry and the Chicago Historical Society that designated CHS as the senior partner in the electronic project immediately extended the possibilities for that publication because of the diversity of media that characterize the vast CHS collections. Moreover, the electronic encyclopedia can serve as a portal to these collections and become a cornerstone of the Historical Society's growing, innovative Internet presence. The contents of the Newberry Library's print edition of the Encyclopedia of Chicago provide the heart of the Web-based Encyclopedia. Published by the Chicago Historical Society, the electronic version of The Encyclopedia of Chicago draws upon not only the work of the editors but also the staff at CHS and the newest participants in this partnership–the designers and programmers from Academic Technologies at Northwestern University.

What appears here is a first version of a new kind of metropolitan history. We are grateful to the Chicago Historical Society for providing us with an opportunity to experiment. This Encyclopedia is very much "to be continued," and we hope that people who care about Chicago will enrich this story with the history of their own paths through Chicago. And of course that some of those paths will lead to the Newberry Library and the Chicago Historical Society.

Janice L. Reiff
Ann Durkin Keating
James R. Grossman