Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative

Michael Buckland
Co-Director, Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative
University of California, Berkeley

The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) is an effort to transform scholarship and education, mainly in the humanities and social sciences, through enhanced attention to time and place. A center on the University of California, Berkeley campus supports an informal worldwide collaboration of libraries, museums, scholars, and educators. The shared goals are:

• to theorize the role of time and place in culture and history;
• to encourage (and develop, if need be) improved infrastructure, notably: clearinghouses of Web-accessible resources; improved gazetteer standards; map visualization software to combine data downloaded as needed from diverse sources, and to show change through time;
• to encourage and develop conferences and training workshops.Examples of recent and current projects will illustrate these activities.
  
  Web Link:
  http://ecai.org/Handout:
  The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (MS Word)