Cedar Falls, Iowa — Historians at the University of Northern Iowa are taking on the daunting, never-ending task of creating, preserving and sharing a digital history of Iowa, from millennia before Iowa was a state up through modern day.
Professor Jennifer McNabb, who heads UNI’s history department, says it will simply be called EncyclopedIA, with the IA in capital letters.
An outgrowth of the Teaching Iowa History project, EncyclopedIA promises to be a valuable tool for teachers statewide to use in their classrooms, but it also aims to be a one-stop-shop for anyone wanting to learn about Iowa.
As a girl, McNabb recalls her family had a set of World Book encyclopedias, which helped cement her lifelong interest in history. There’s a key difference though when comparing those heavy tomes to the coming online version.
Many years in the making, the EncyclopedIA project will be an organic, “living entity,” according to McNabb, as it will be a constant work in progress. The initial incarnation is scheduled to go online in the fall of 2022.
