(Editor’s note: Today marks the start of International Open Access Week 2023. Four years ago we published this post by editor Krista McCracken, explaining why open access is a core value of their work as a historian, educator, and archivist. “Where we publish matters,” argues McCracken, particularly when we work with communities or for non-academic audiences. That commitment to access… Read more »
By Sarah Glassford and Nathan Smith The “Canada’s First World War” series launched on ActiveHistory.ca with a Call for Blog Posts, published on 4 August 2014. It concluded in the Fall of 2019, with a total of 78 posts, including this post. The series editors during this five-year run were: Mary Chaktsiris, Sarah Glassford, Christopher Schulz, Nathan Smith, and Jonathan… Read more »
Sean Kheraj This week, I’ve been invited to speak on a panel about digital technologies and open access in the university. I’ll be addressing these issues as they relate to my field of Canadian history. We have been provided with a series of questions to address. Here are two of the most significant questions that we will consider on this… Read more »
Sean Kheraj For the past few months, Tom Peace and I have been writing an open education resource textbook with support from eCampus Ontario. This is a free, online textbook in Canadian history intended to complement John Belshaw’s two open textbooks, Canadian History: Pre-Confederation and Canadian History: Post-Confederation. We’ve called this textbook, Open History Seminar: Canadian History and it is… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Open-Access.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham There are certain universal experiences that go along with being involved in academics, one of which is explaining the publishing model of academic journals. This is particularly difficult for grad students, who, upon their first publication, are confronted by family members wondering how much they got paid. It’s a well meaning… Read more »
By Sean Kheraj Canadian environmental history is a burgeoning sub-field of Canadian history, but it is not very well known outside of academia. This is my own research speciality. On many occasions, I have had to answer the question: what is environmental history? Periodically, this is a question that environmental historians ask themselves. There have been several reflective articles about… Read more »
By Krista McCracken National digital library projects and national digitization initiatives have emerged across the world in recent years with varying levels of funding, support, and success. How does Canada’s national attempts at digitization and open access compare to international efforts to make material freely accessible online? The example closest to home is the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)… Read more »
By Sean Kheraj If there was a weekly prize for active historians in Canada, Ian Mosby would have been last week’s winner. Canadian national news media (including print, radio, television, and web) prominently featured Dr. Mosby’s recently published Histoire Sociale/Social History article, “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952.” This paper… Read more »
