It’s been all about the Archives Wiki this week, with a post on Tuesday and an announcement in the February issue of Perspectives on History, recently placed online. So it seems only fitting to start off this week’s “What We’re Reading” with reactions to the Archives Wiki from around the blogosphere. Following that we’re reading about challenging history, navigating the Library of Congress, catching up with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and finally taking a closer look at open access.

Reactions to the AHA Archives Wiki

• A Wiki About Archives, But Not Created by Archivists
  Kate Theimer at ArchivesNext offers her critique and reservations about different elements of the new AHA Archives Wiki.
• Pondering Structured Data About Archives
  Jeanne Kramer-Smyth at the Spellbound Blog supports the “vision inherent in the Archives Wiki,” but considers the different methods through which a project like this could be done (specifically pointing to databases).
• The Wiki has also been noted around the blogsphere; see Dan Cohen’s Digital Humanities blog, Thomas Cobbaert.edu, Charles Babbage Institute News and Information, Edwired, and the Ten Thousand Year Blog.

What Else We’re Reading

• Challenging History
  Harvard president and historian Drew Gilpin Faust talks to the Washington Post‘s style writer Bob Thompson about her new book The Republic of Suffering, her career of challenging conventional thinking, and her life as a female academic.
• Be Your Own Docent
  The Library of Congress has made available on its web site podcasts used to train LOC docents and tour guides. Check them out and learn “little-known wonders of the magnificent Thomas Jefferson Building and the rich collections of the Library of Congress.”
• Episode 4, Part 2: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
  The second half of a podcast interview with AHA president-elect Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is now available at the Making History Podcast Blog. In this installment she “she gives advice to aspiring historians…includes her thoughts about the renaissance of women’s history, touches on the tensions she experiences as both a feminist and a Mormon, and gives some details about her new research projects.”
• Open Access
  Two former leaders of the AHA grappled with the issue of open access scholarship this week. Former AHA President Bob Darnton makes "The Case for Open Access" and former AHA vice president for research, Stan Katz raises some concerns about "Harvard Scholarship on the Web.” For another viewpoint see Robert Townsend’s blog post from yesterday about the Gutenberg-e project going open access.

Contributors: Elisabeth Grant, Vernon Horn, and Robert Townsend

This post first appeared on AHA Today.