Gathering history of Philadelphia

New York has an encyclopedia. Chicago has one, too. They've been praised by readers and critics alike as useful one-stop sources of information.

But Philadelphia - where the nation began - doesn't have an up-to-date encyclopedia.

At least not yet.

The long process of creating one has begun with members of the city's historical and cultural community gathering yesterday and today to work on the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, a print and online resource that is expected to be completed by 2014.

More than 150 organizations, scholars, authors, and others have been discussing the contents of the massive project at workshops at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Center City. They hope to assemble the first comprehensive treatment of the city's history in more than 25 years, and the first Philadelphia encyclopedia in more than 70 years.

"Here is one of the great cities of the country, and it has no encyclopedia. . . . Why shouldn't we have one?" asked Howard Gillette, a professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden and one of the book's four editors.

He is working locally with fellow editors Charlene Mires, associate professor of history at Villanova University, and Randall Miller, professor of history at St. Joseph's University. Gary Nash, an author and a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, is a consulting editor.

"There is a teaching element to this that goes beyond a narrow scholarly version," said Gillette, author of Camden After the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-industrial City. "No one will read through this cover to cover, but they will find connections the city has to the region and how it's all tied together."

Readers, he said, "will feel more connected to the place where they live and work."

But how will the editors weave together so much information? What do you put into an encyclopedia covering more than three centuries of development, immigration, art, culture, and political change?

"We want to generate new knowledge and assemble and disseminate it as widely as possible," said Mires, author of Independence Hall in American Memory. "And we want to do this in partnership with anyone who wants to join us."

The editors will work with cultural institutions, schools, civic organizations, and the public to take a fresh look at the key people, places, and events that define the city. The project's Web site, philadelphiaencyclopedia.org, will allow the public to submit ideas for encyclopedia entries and will provide progress updates.

"We want to build this online as we go," Mires said. "We are interested in community involvement - and stable authoritative content."

The Barra Foundation, a private philanthropic organization in Wyndmoor, provided funding for the workshop. Additional support came from Southwest Airlines and the Union League of Philadelphia.

But the project is still raising money for the years of work ahead and expects to apply in the summer for funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

"We're using the [workshop] experience to inform us for the application," Gillette said.

Among the speakers at yesterday's workshop was Sam Katz, a Philadelphia businessman and former mayoral candidate, who is producing a documentary film series on the history of Philadelphia. He has taken many of the steps that the encyclopedia editors will probably need to undergo.

"I'm here to present the process we have used to implement collaboration among historians and institutions," Katz said. "We have a formalized written agreement with 30 institutions, including the Art Museum, universities, and libraries. . . . It's a good model."

The agreement provides for, among other things, a single standard release policy for materials, standardized pricing for their use, and provision of digital content to the institutions.

Katz's project was "one of a number of breakthrough research efforts, revealing more about Philadelphia's history," Gillette said after hours of meetings yesterday.

The workshop, he said, "has raised tough choices about how to bring all this information together . . . how to turn this into a volume that works for the readers."