In light of recent events, we revisit Karin Wulf’s 2022 post which declared that universities need democracy, and vice versa, and discussed an important book which shows the 20th century history of that relationship in the United States, and offers a prescription for what we do as both are imperiled.
Attribution has many virtues, but among them it can make visible the vast infrastructure of research for a public largely unaware or unconcerned with how much hard-won knowledge, including creative endeavor, that research has facilitated.
We’re off for the holidays, see you in January.
The role of libraries and archives as streaming grows, choice declines, and the death of the red envelopes arrives.
Studying the way we’ve studied the past is mutual work. Archivists and librarians, and scholars using their collections, have each been producing critical archives scholarship that too often remains within disciplinary and professional siloes.
What does the decline of the English major mean for society at large, and university presses in particular?
On July 4, 1971 Michael Hart posted the first ebook file on the ARPANET and transformed content distribution.
A new book explores how biases and broken systems get built into technology products and platforms.
2016, The. Laughs. Just. Keep. Coming… This is a post about how events in the non-scholarly publishing world are going to have a very big impact on us. Question is, what are we going to do about what’s going on?
An excellent book about humankind in general holds important fundamental insights for scholarly publishers, editors, and researchers.
Historians can and do play a vital role in the public humanities, but there are vital reasons not just why but how we write for one another, too.
The musical “Hamilton” raises questions about history and historical practice that reflects what scholars are and aren’t doing.
Citation practices vary between and within STM and HSS; they also vary by discipline and within disciplines. Though citation metrics presume evidence of “impact,” in fact a citation may represent a range of intentions. Given the emphasis on citation indices, isn’t it important to query what scholars are actually doing when they cite another scholar’s work?
A meeting about annotation services and software shows how new tools may be on the horizon, and reminds us that our audiences are likely to be the heaviest users once these emerge.
A group of history editors in the UK publish an open letter stating they will not comply with aspects of the RCUK mandates for OA. What can we learn from this?