Third Chapter May 2021 Update

Updates

by Lee Walton

Core Project

It has been almost 10 months since The Third Chapter Project, Inc. became a 501-C-3. COVID-19 complicated the launch of our new nonprofit venture in Africa, but I am happy to report that this has not dampened our passion for the mission. Without the ability to travel we (along with the rest of the world) have adapted to Zoom.  What has been underway is that we have been working with our Open Access partners (especially Knowledge Unlatched and their Open Research Library) to support access to quality scholarly resources. Our impact can be measured by the discoverability of almost 15,000 titles, articles, and journals in 5 countries (Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Guinea-Bissau, and South Africa). We are working with consortia to be able to track usage within the year. To date, 194 University/Colleges (including teacher colleges) are in various stages of adoption of the platform-packages we represent. This extrapolates to almost 400K students and researchers having seamless access to high-quality curated titles in humanities, social science and pedagogical theory and practice.

New Partner

I am pleased to announce our new publishing partner University of Michigan Press and their new Open Access initiative on the Fulcrum platform. We will have more information as this develops. Thank you so much Charles Watkinson and team–we are so pleased to be working with you again.

OTHA

Oh, the Humanities Africa! Is our new project. We will be launching in the fall of 2021. Currently we have a subscriber list of over 2,000 and growing: librarians, faculty, and deans/chairs. This will start our subscriber base for OTHA. This newsletter will be mirrored on the existing Oh, the Humanities! format: however, content and the editorial team will be 100% African. This publication will truly be the voice of African scholars.  We will have more information on OTHA as we get closer to our launch date.