Dear Users of the Handbook of Texas Online:

The Texas State Historical Association, the publisher of the Handbook of Texas Online, needs your help. Please consider an annual donation to the TSHA. Even a small donation from each user contributed annually would make a Texas-sized difference.

In 1999 the TSHA took a bold step when it launched the Handbook of Texas Online. It published all 24,000 articles of the print encyclopedia in an electronically searchable format and made them available free of charge over the Internet, thereby setting new standards for public access. In the last decade, the online site has responded to 150 million requests for information from readers world-wide.

On any given day, the site is visited by more than 10,000 visitors. During the month of November 2008, 330,000 visitors came to the site from 182 countries and territories. These visits included, for example, 196 from Russia, 299 from China, 65 from Bulgaria, and 10 from Ethiopia. Of course the bulk of visits come from the United States (298,000) and countries such as Ireland (7,651), Canada (3,044), United Kingdom (2,830), and Mexico (1,913). (Google Analytics is addictive.)

What do these numbers tell us about the power of Texas state and local history when it is combined with scholarly authority and virtually unlimited access? We learn that there is a vast market for the Handbook of Texas Online and that what we do is important, not only to people within Texas, but also to people around the world. Our visitors could make a huge difference in the ability of the Texas State Historical Association to provide needed updates to the content as well as necessary technology upgrades to meet the expectations of a new generation of users..

For the first time, we are asking users of the online Handbook to contribute to its support on an annual basis.

I ask you now, as users of the Handbook of Texas, to click the donate button and give what you can to support the Handbook of Texas and the Texas State Historical Association. Please do your part to ensure that this site remains free and open to all those everywhere who are interested in learning about our state and its history.

Sincerely,

J. Kent Calder
Executive Director

Note: Please support the Handbook of Texas and TSHA with an annual gift of $5, $15, $25, or more. For your security, payments are processed using Paypal.