Academics Build Blog-to-eBook Publishing Tool in One Week

I used to think that you couldn't do anything in the humanities in just one week, but maybe times are changing.

Last week, twelve scholars came together at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University to participate in the inaugural One Week, One Tool program. Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, their mandate was to build something useful: they called it a barn raising, and the structure they built is Anthologize.org.

Anthologize is a Wordpress plugin that allows scholars, conference organizers, and bloggers to create eBooks out of websites. Its creators imagine it could be used by researchers to "sketch ideas, collaborate with co-authors, edit and develop research notes into arguments, publish conference proceedings, and engage in public scholarly communication without the typical barriers." Or perhaps teachers will turn their class blogs into custom publications.

So, what separates Anthologize from commercial blog-to-book services like Blurb or Lulu? (Both fantastic services, IMHO.) First, it's a Wordpress plugin, so if you're familiar with that tool (as many are), it should be easy to manipulate.

"Because it's open source, third-party developers can create translators and importers for other formats as well, and contribute them back," added Doug Knox, director of publication and digital initiatives at the Newberry Library, and part of the One Week, One Tool team. "Lulu and Blurb -- and others like FastPencil -- are focused on commercial blog-to-book publishing. They don't have as much flexibility in importing existing content, and they aren't as open to extending the range of output formats."

Anthologize doesn't currently support turning out actual printed books, but its PDFs could be uploaded to a Lulu.

I'm most impressed with the whole approach of the program. It's not just that they go a small team to do something (anything!) in seven days, but that they focused on scholarly infrastructure. They didn't just create an anthology, they created an anthologizer, and that seems worth applauding.

Alexis Madrigal is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the host of KQED’s Forum.