Final preparations are underway for the launch of the CIC Historic Campus Architecture Project (HCAP), the first nationwide architecture and landscape database of independent college and university campuses. The launch date is projected for late in 2006. Directing this project is Barbara S. Christen, an architectural historian who has been leading the CIC project since 2002.

The CIC HCAP website will provide extensive information about significant buildings, landscapes, campus plans, and heritage sites of American higher education. Through a rich set of bibliographic materials and a user-friendly search engine, it will also guide viewers to a wide variety of sources that they can use for further study.

Supported by two generous grants from the Getty Foundation, the HCAP website documents nearly 2,000 campus sites of historical significance. One of the treasures that visitors will find on the website is a collection of more than 4,300 images relating to the featured sites. To date, nearly 370 institutions have participated.

The computer software platform for the CIC HCAP website is Greenstone, an open-source program developed by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at Waikato University. The developers of Greenstone describe its purpose as: “to empower users, particularly in universities, libraries, and other public service institutions, to build their own digital libraries.” It has been tailored extensively to fit the requirements of a project that offers such a wealth of visual and textual material on the physical presence of the liberal arts college and university. Watch for news of the website launch coming soon.