Chicago History Museum

The Chicago History Museum will convert analog card catalog records for 6,000 small manuscript collections into fully digital catalog records. Acquired by the museum in the early 20th century, the collections manuscripts describe aspects of life in the United States from the Colonial era to the Civil War, and their descriptions have not been updated. The museum will photocopy the existing catalog cards, enter all catalog data for the documents, and prepare the data for batch entry into its online catalog. Project activities will also include updating approximately 1,600 existing catalog records for the small manuscript collections that are already digitized. Upon completion of this work, the collections will be discoverable both in the museum's public online library system and in the digital databases it belongs to, including WorldCat and EXPLORE Chicago Collections. This project will allow all of the museum's small manuscript collections to become fully discoverable by remote audiences.