American History Now: Explorations in Digital Curation

Abstract

2013-2014. American History Now was a WordPress publication developed as part of the PressForward project. As part of the broad effort to redefine scholarly communication in the digital age, American History Now sought to use digital media to make the peer review process more open, facilitate intellectual discussion, and build a community of readers. Conceived as an experiment in digital curation focused on collecting, juxtaposing, and framing ideas, American History Now eschewed a long pre-publication peer review and editing process. Instead, all relevant content submitted was accepted for immediate publication and opened to peer review through comments by readers. American History Now republished work found elsewhere and solicited original material. The first and only “issue” of American History Now was dedicated to vinyl, its history, and its current place in American culture. The original plan was to turn the scholarship on the site into an ebook exhibit at the end of the project in April 2014, but that final step was never completed.