Are you interested in the history of New York? You might want to check out a new site which is a collaborative project between nine Reference and Research Library Resources Councils in New York State. The site is called New York Heritage and it’s available at http://www.newyorkheritage.org.

The site contains information from over 160 collections from library, museums, archives, and other resources across the state of New York. You can browse the collections but unfortunately the browsing is by institution, and actually seeing the holdings of the institution requires a mouse click. In other words, the browse page does not let you review all the available collections in one click. So you might like searching better.

I searched for chickens (I tried several other search terms, but this one got me a nice mix of various kinds of items.) I got 40 results, including photographs, newspapers, church directories, interviews, and a very odd postcard featuring a group of people, each holding a chicken. Items include a thumbnail: click on the thumbnail and you get to the original institution’s page for the item. The original pages vary in their presentation but the ones I looked at had a lot of detail and additional information. I was especially impressed with http://www.wnylegacy.org‘s presentation of newspaper archives. What a treat.

If the simple search doesn’t get what you’re looking for, there is a more advanced search that lets you specify fields. And there’s a short link list to other New York resources. But what I’d really love here would be a subject headings list. On the other hand, if I got to explore 160 collections related to the state of New York via a subject headings list, you might not see me for days and days…