News

• Digital Preservation in a Time of Disorder

  

  by Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Martin Paul Eve Institutions of higher education in the United States have long served as independent producers and disseminators of knowledge for the public good. This role has encouraged great trust in these institutions, but public trust in higher education dropped by 12% between 2015 and 2023. This trust is under…

• Digital Scholar Donates $20,000 to Support Knowledge Commons…and Helps Us Reach A Major Milestone!

  Today, the Knowledge Commons team is delighted to share that Digital Scholar has donated $20,000 to supporting KC. We are immensely grateful to the support Digital Scholar has shown us over the years, with the funds donated to our project since 2019 now totalling $172,500. And, this donation is particularly impactful for us this year,…

• KCWorks Named Designated Public-Access Repository of the National Endowment for the Humanities

  Knowledge Commons (KC) is delighted to announce that our repository, KCWorks has been selected as the designated public-access repository of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The partnership between KC and the NEH will fulfill the agency’s commitment to making federally funded research freely available without delay as mandated by the White House Office…

• A Spring Update from Knowledge Commons About Our Use of Generative AI

  Last November, we presented you with our first update on Generative AI (GAI) use at Knowledge Commons (KC). As the Commons is sponsored, hosted, and developed at Michigan State University, we’ve taken our initial guidance from the MSU Interim Guidance on Data Uses and Risks of Generative AI.  We wanted to update you on how…

• A Commons By Any Other Name…

  The team at Humanities Commons has some big news to share.  Over the past year, we have been thinking hard about our purpose, values and strategic direction, and one recurring theme has been that our original name, while very close to our hearts, no longer fully encapsulates the work that we do, or that we…

• James Madison University Libraries Joins Humanities Commons as a Sustaining Member

  Our team is thrilled to share that James Madison University Libraries have signed on to Humanities Commons as a sustaining member. Their participation over the coming years will help us to continue supporting our community of researchers, educators, students and other creators to discover open works, connect with their peers, and share their valuable contributions…

• Meeting Our Match: Update #1

  Three weeks into our fundraising campaign to complete our NEH matching grant challenge, it’s time for an update! (Not sure what we’re talking about? Read our launch post.) We are hugely grateful to everyone who has contributed so far – we have received 10 new individual donations (here’s where to do donate), and a number…

• Help Us Meet Our Match

  Friends, today we’re launching a very special fundraising campaign to support the Commons. Here’s the tl;dr: we need to complete the fundraising match for our NEH challenge grant by the end of June to unlock the last of the grant. Every dollar helps our open source, academy owned, community governed platform to operate sustainably for…

• Digital Scholar Donates $20,000 to Support Humanities Commons

  The Humanities Commons team is pleased to share that Digital Scholar has generously donated $20,000 to our ongoing work. This gift allows us to continue offering our services to our community of users for free, enabling them to discover open works, connect with their peers, and share their valuable contributions to our collective knowledge. Digital…

• Threads

  Some months back, when Meta first launched Threads and announced its plans to federate with Mastodon (and, one supposes, other Fediverse properties), we polled the membership of hcommons.social to gauge their feelings about whether we should be prepared to block, allow connections to the Threads server, or take a wait-and-see position. Based on the results…