Today’s scholars face a perfect storm. We are pressured to generate more publications to satisfy the rising expectations of colleges and universities, and to maintain our individual standing within a bleak academic job market. But in this tightening economy, publishers have raised prices for scholarly books and journals while the purchasing power of academic libraries has declined. Each year it becomes more difficult for institutions of higher education to afford access to the knowledge created by their own faculty, which in turn, decreases readership of our work. What can be done to find our way out of this storm?
This presentation explores the possibilities of online scholarly publishing by comparing two digital books that the author and colleagues designed and are distributing on the public web. The first, On The Line: How Schooling, Housing, and Civil Rights Shaped Hartford and its Suburbs, blends an historical narrative on metropolitan change with interactive maps and oral history videos. The second, Writing History in the Digital Age, is an edited volume on how technology is transforming the creation and circulation of interpretations about the past. Essays in the open peer-review edition received over 940 comments by appointed experts and general readers, and if approved for publication by the University of Michigan Press, will be distributed in two formats: in print (for sale) and online (for free).
Audience members are encouraged to bring questions — and wireless laptops or tablets — to the presentation, and those who cannot attend in person are welcome to post comments online at either of the links above.