Silicon Valley History Online (SVHO) 2.0

Welcome to SVHO 2.0. SVHO 2.0 is the second incarnation of the Silicon Valley History Online project. You can read about the project below. SVHO 2.0 is a result of moving the project into Omeka in 2019.

About SVHO

Welcome to the Silicon Valley History Online website. Our goal is to create a gateway to the major historical resources of California's Santa Clara Valley. You will find photographs, maps, letters, postcards, manuscripts, scrapbooks, menus, programs from events, and many other materials from local libraries, archives, and museums. Please consult our Copyright Guidelines for general information and conditions of use. On this site you can:

About the Project

Silicon Valley History Online is a project of the Silicon Valley Local History Network (SVLHN) (2019 Note: Link no longer works). In the spring of 2003, seven of the institutions jointly wrote a 2003/2004 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant and received $144,000 from the California State Library to put 1,000 historical images online while also developing cataloging guidelines and a local subject thesaurus for the project.

More about the project, including our SVHO Project Manual, can be found on our Project page. More about the seven project partners, including contact and reproduction information, can be found on the Partners' page.

About Silicon Valley

Where is Silicon Valley?

Officially, [it] is called the Santa Clara Valley. It stretches between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the San Francisco Bay, from Palo Alto, through Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, down to San Jose. Then continues on about as far south again toward the farming community of Gilroy.

Thomas Mahon in Charged Bodies: People, Power and Paradox in Silicon Valley, p.4

What is Silicon Valley?

The Valley of Heart's Delight for those who remember its past, and the Silicon Valley for those caught up in the digital revolution. Ohlone culture gave way to orchards, which turned into an aerospace industry, and now high tech and biotech campuses. This valley is as much a state of mind as a place as Kevin Starr implied in his book on Americans and the California Dream.

Paul Locatelli, S.J., from "The Valley: A Mural of Educating for Culture" Convocation Speech at Santa Clara University, September 15, 2000

What is Silicon Valley like culturally today?

Like the belled sheep at the fore of the flock, Silicon Valley is a bellwether beast, pursuing the newest technologies on the drawing board and in the hand. Its specialized economic history, once based on fruit agriculture and now built around high-technology production, has drawn people from around the world.

J.A. English-Lueck in Cultures@SiliconValley, p.1

Contact Us

Questions and comments about this Website should be directed to the Archive and Special Collections Department, Santa Clara University (specialcollections@scu.edu, 408-554-6808).

For information about our online collections, please contact the owning institution for each item. Contact information for contributing institutions is available on the Partners' page.

This project was supported in part by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian.

(c) Copyright 2004 Silicon Valley History Online