Now Open Access: Gutenberg-e History Monographs

lowengard_home.jpgIn 1999, the Gutenberg-e program made a big splash as one of the first experiments in online scholarly monograph publication. Co-sponsored by the American Historical Association and the Columbia University Press, Gutenberg-e offered a space for new scholars to take advantage of the power of digital media to present their research in innovative ways. Since the project’s debut, 36 historians have won the Gutenberg-e competition and had their revised dissertations published as digital monographs, which have been available to libraries through subscription. The authors were able to enhance their texts with vivid images, primary source material, pop-up glossaries, web links, and other features.

Columbia University Press has recently made Gutenberg-e open-access, making these books freely available to the general public. Visit http://www.gutenberg-e.org/ to see titles such as Sarah Lowengard’s The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe; Maria Rentetzi’s Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna; and Sherry Fields’ Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico.