I’ve long been fascinated by the concept of the serial and have wanted to figure out a way to embrace this dynamic form of publishing.
This year, I had the chance to publish the first volume in a serial publication: Grand Forks at 150: The First Fifty. This is a collaborative volume of 50, 150-word, essays on the city of Grand Forks (a better explanation of this appears below the cover image). Many of the essays came from Nikki Berg Burin’s class in the Department of History and American Indian Studies. Other essays came from faculty, community members, and Susan Caraher, Grand Forks’s Historic Preservation Commission Coordinator. These essays were then edited in the Department of English’s Writing, Editing, and Publishing practicum this spring and these students also designed book and its cover.
More on this publication below the fold!
It is my pleasure to announce the publication of the first fifty essays in the Grand Fork at 150 project. This project is set to recognize the first 150 years of white settlement in Grand Forks, North Dakota. As many of you know, settlers platted the town site of Grand Forks and opened it for legal settlement in 1874. To recognize this event, the UND Department of History and American Indiana Studies with the support of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Grand Forks Historic Preservation Commission, and The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota initiated a project to collect 150, 150-word essays on the history of the city. Our hope is that this short-essay format would help us capture a plurality of perspectives on the history of the city and our community.
Over the past year, undergraduate students under the direction of Nikki Berg Burin, faculty, and community members came together to write the first 50 of these essays. They were then edited by students in the UND’s English Department’s Writing, Editing, and Publishing Program who also designed the book and its cover. We release the first fifty today as both a start to this project and as an invitation to others to consider contributing an essay over the next year. Our plan is to publish another fifty essays in next year!
But wait, there’s more!
Several of the essays in this volume will be recited by Justin Montigne’s voice students and set to music by UND’s contemporary music ensemble under the direction of Christopher Gable. They will perform at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 28, in the Hughes Fine Arts Center’s Josephine Campbell Rectal Hall on campus. For more on the concert, go here. There will be a live stream here.
The current volume is available as a free, open access download from The Digital Press website: https://thedigitalpress.org/GFK150/
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World 