Build it. Publish it. Share it. Invite scholars to build upon it.

Anvil Academic’s first publishing venture is the Built Upon series. The “series encourages authors to investigate and invigorate pre-existing digital tools and collections in developing their own scholarly arguments or pedagogical projects.” Digital projects suffer from lack of attention and being lost in the noise of the Internet. Marketing a digital project takes more than announcing it on a listserve or writing a blog post about it.

Anvil Academic brings attention to great resources and also provides an entry point for educators who are interested in developing curriculum. Digital collections, whether they are built by a library or humanities scholar, are wonderful, free resources for educators. Publishing “pedagogical projects” created from digital collections creates interest and use. In some ways this series reminds me of Code for America’s Race for Reuse, which challenged civic-minded technologists to reuse software to support their community needs.

For more information on the series, click here or visit the FAQ. If you are a digital library, archives, or digital humanist and would like to participate by partnering with Anvil Academic, so that scholars and educators can use your project, it’s not too late. You can learn more about how to participate here.