They were domestics and carpenters and metal workers, husbands and wives and children--about 3,200 people enslaved in the nation's capital when the Civil War broke out. On April 16, 1862, eight and a half months before the Emancipation Proclamation, they were freed by Congress through the D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act.It was the first time the federal government set slaves at liberty. Now rare details of those lives are emerging, as scholars transcribe and study the petitions filed by slave owners seeking compensation under the 1862 law. "It's the largest set of information about any one group of slaves in American history that I know of," says Kenneth J. Winkle, a professor of American history at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. "People, including me, will be working with this information for years."[Personal note: As I will obnoxiously remind people from time to time, I grew up in DC, so I'm especially glad to have gotten a chance to do this story.] Read More at The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) »
Journalism
“Rise in E-Book Readership Is Good News for Reading Over All, Report Says”
A new report from the Pew Internet Project finds that those who read e-books tend to read more books in any format. Print retains its strong appeal, too, especially for books that people want to share or to read with children. Read More at Wired Campus (CHE) »
“Hot Type: An Open Letter to Academic Publishers About Open Access”
In which I talk about the rise of a culture of openness among researchers--are we seeing an "Academic Spring"?--and ask publishers how they will adapt to it. Read More at The Chronicle of Higher Education »
“How to Protect Copyright Is Key Topic at Publishers’ Meeting”
Legislation is not the way to fight online piracy--at least not right now. That was the message broadcast at the annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers, held in NYC on March 14, 2012. Read More at The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) »
“Google Begins to Scale Back Its Scanning of Books From University Libraries”
Google has been quietly slowing down its book-scanning work with partner libraries, according to librarians involved with the vast Google Books digitization project. But what that means for the company's long-term investment in the work remains unclear. Is Google running out of books to scan? Has it shifted its priorities away from collecting the world's knowledge? There may be more than one reason for the slowdown. Read More at The Chronicle of Higher Education »
