The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative is a global consortium of people who share the vision of creating a distributed virtual library of cultural information with a time and place interface.  Supported with a CITRIS Seed Funded grant, this project now has funding from numerous sources, including the Hewlett Foundation and the Lilly Endowment. ECAI assists the collaboration of scholars across region and discipline by engaging technical specialists in serving the needs of scholars and by making research available worldwide over the Web. Sample projects include the Religious Atlas of China and Himalaya, and the Animated TimeMap of Khmer Empire 100 CE - 1550 CE.