The Encyclopedia of Chicago was created with two ideas in mind. First, a city’s history cannot be isolated from its metropolitan context. And second, metropolitan history tells a set of interwoven stories whose elements include places, institutions, groups, activities, and experiences. Indeed “experience” stands at the center: we wanted to understand the links–over time and space–among the experiences of a diverse population spread across a diverse region. The encyclopedia provides an intriguing analogy: people experience a large metropolitan area like Chicago only in parts, just as they can only sample the vast body of information on the Web. The Encyclopedia of Chicago is a collaborative project of the Chicago History Museum, the Newberry Library, and Northwestern University.