Launched in January 2017, the Open Knowledge Practicum puts networked open social scholarship into action by inviting members of the community, as well as university faculty, staff, and students, to pursue their own research projects in the ETCL. The lab supports fellows by providing access to various resources, library materials, and archives; offering consultation and guidance; and pairing fellows with specialists in the field, among other project-specific assistance. The practicum has spanned a wide array of topics, ranging from discipline-specific foci to local public history and research on the broader community. One of the primary outcomes of this initiative is that research is made available in a public, online venue, as well as made discoverable to both general and more targeted communities. All Open Knowledge Practicum fellows contribute their research outcomes to Wikipedia, either by editing or adding to existing information, or by creating entirely new pages. We consider Wikipedia to be a prime example of the type of scholarship and online culture that is developed and sustained by citizen scholars. The Open Knowledge Practicum is a step toward more publicly engaged scholarship that supports research proposed by its fellows.
To learn more, visit our Open Knowledge Practicums page!