Connecticut's Heritage ECHOsystem: Resolving the Challenges to Interoperability Across Disparate Digital Repositories

FAIN: HD-50466-08

Connecticut Humanities Council (Middletown, CT 06457-3204)
Bruce Fraser (Project Director: April 2008 to August 2010)
Stuart L. Parnes (Project Director: August 2010 to July 2014)
Douglas G. Fisher (Project Director: July 2014 to April 2010)

A unique electronic system bringing together digitized records, images and documents, Connecticut-focused curricula, Connecticut history-centered media resources, indexes of related museum exhibitions and events, and scholar-written essays and short entries.

"Connecticut's ECHOsystem" addresses the dwindling appreciation of the Connecticut past and its influence on the national story through the creation of an online reference text of authoritative scholar-written content enriched by essential institutional, archival, curricular and media resources in Connecticut history. ECHOsystem partners envision the project as a national model both in the integration of historical content from multiple databases in a single,easily accessible, user-friendly reference source and in the development of a new software code to assist other multiple database digitalization projects. During the 12-month NEH Digital Start-Up II period, the ECHOsystem partnership expects to retain the services of an experienced software development firm to resolve issues of interoperability across the project's disparate digital repositories.