Austin Past and Present
Austin Past and Present is a multimedia project about Austin history scheduled to appear on DVD-ROM by the end of the year.
A friend of mine is writing a couple of articles for it. From the teasers on the website -- a brief demo and some video clips -- it looks like a very nice educational resource. And I like the idea of enlisting an army of volunteers to write something like this collaboratively. ("Like a Wiki!" I can hear some of you saying.)
Of course, really big scholarly projects are collaborative, too. Another friend once worked his way through grad school cranking out articles for the six-volume Handbook of Texas, which I'm delighted to see is online. Here are the Handbook's entries on some favorite Austin topics: Clarksville, Barton Springs, blues and the Armadillo World Headquarters. Hmm -- something is wrong there if the 'Dillo gets several times as many words as Barton Springs. I see there's an admirably detailed entry for Tex-Mex foods but nothing coherent about barbecue, though, so consistent coverage must not be a top priority. But the depth is sometimes astonishing; the Texas literature article goes way past Dobie and McMurtry -- my cousin Sandra is even in there.