Category Archives: commons

Wikimania for Historians

Coming to the Barbican in London this weekend (August 8 to 10) is Wikimania 2014, a great gathering of people involved in Wikipedia and its many related projects. There are hundreds of panels and talks, and as an attendee and … Continue reading

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#closed

As announced on twitter, I have decided that every time a paywall or an archive blocks me from reading an academic article, I’m going to tweet it with the hashtag #closed. From now on, every time I can’t access an … Continue reading

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Making the TCP-ECCO texts accessible

In April, the Text Creation Partnership released into the public domain over 2,000 eighteenth century works,  in plain text. You can read more about this project and the texts on their blog: TCP Releases Over 4,000 New EEBO-TCP Texts What the … Continue reading

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Murdoch redux

Following on from my previous post, some news: The British Library has backed down from digitising and putting online out of copyright editions of the Times. This raises serious questions about its whole mission: are they resigned to the irreplaceable … Continue reading

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The Enclosure of the Historical Commons (2): Murdoch Junior

Last week James Murdoch spoke at the launch of UCL’s new Centre for Digital Humanities. Quite why they invited him I don’t know, for he appears to have no idea of what the Digital Humanities are. That said, his speech … Continue reading

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The Enclosure of the Historical Commons, part 1

Today, the Commons has become – one could say, returned as – a key political desire. From peasants to hackers, squatters to scientists,  shared resources for all to contribute to and benefit from are invented, built, defended, with varying degrees … Continue reading

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