I’m very happy to announce that we’ve worked with the HathiTrust to release the first 74 volumes of North Dakota Quarterly to the Open Access University under a CC-BY-ND license. The ND for all you open access crusaders who saw that and immediately started to sharpen blades is an unfortunate necessity because for much of NDQ’s history we published without contracts or with very restricted contracts that only allowed works to appear in a particular volume of NDQ. We know that it’s not idea, but it is better than nothing or a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
You can get access to The Archive, here.
I also made this little graphic to celebrate the dropping of The Archive.
Here’s the press release that’ll go out today:
On Homecoming weekend, alumni, students, faculty, and administrators take time to celebrate the past and future of the University of North Dakota. North Dakota Quarterly is joining this celebration by releasing over 100 years of back issues to the public for free. The Quarterly is among the oldest academic traditions at the University, and the release of digitalized back issues is part of a renaissance at the journal centered on an active editorial board, a vibrant new design, and a dynamic web presence. By releasing these back issues, the Quarterly makes a world of content that could only be read at libraries available to anyone with an internet connection.
Kate Sweney, the managing editor of NDQ, remarks: “It gives me a great deal of pleasure to finally see the many wonderful volumes of North Dakota Quarterly made available digitally and more easily accessible by a wider audience. I have so many favorite articles, poems, and stories in these issues and its tremendously exciting to open up the Quarterly‘s past to a wider audience.”
Sharon Carson, editor of the Quarterly, responded: “We are proud to be part of public humanities at UND, in North Dakota, and in spaces beyond. We are delighted to make an archive of such remarkable writing from NDQ’s past available to new audiences, and at no cost.”
The Quarterly has long stood as a proving ground for writers across the country and world as well as across campus. The diversity of the Quarterly has long set it apart from the crowded field of literary journals. Sepia toned prairie reveries shared pages with scientific writing, political commentary, history, literature, and poetry.
Bill Caraher, who managed the release of NDQ‘s digital archive, noted: “It is important to stress that NDQ is not a stodgy old academic journal. The back issues reveal the tremendous vitality of the publication as a place for thoughtful comment on the history of the state, the university, and the world. This represents an important resource for teachers, for faculty across the country, and for mindful readers everywhere.”
The Quarterly explores topics as wide as the prairie horizon with thousands of contributions touching on issue as diverse as how best to care for state’s natural resources, the political and social culture of the region, American Indian history and literature, the history of the university, its faculty, and administrators, and the various ways that the world intersects with life in North Dakota.
The back volumes of the Quarterly were digitized as part of the larger Google Book project and are made available through an agreement between the University and the HathiTrust which maintains parts of the Google Books archive. The back issues can be accessed on the ndquarterly.org website and can be downloaded and shared under open access license.
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World 