In a Washington Post article from November, Rob Pegoraro investigates the burgeoning world of “augmented reality”–a concept that makes your mobile phone (as of right now it has to be phone working on the Android or iPhone platforms) into a tool that uncovers layers of information in the world around you. Let’s take this faux [...]

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In his recent military history, John Keegan writes, “The American Civil War is one of the most mysterious great wars of history . . .” We’re never done exploring that mystery, especially in these sesquicentennial years, and now the Library of Virginia offers a new and useful research tool: the Civil War Research Guide. The [...]

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A new article in Inside Higher Ed takes an in-depth look at the business of online encyclopedias, including Encyclopedia Virginia. Here’s a taste: Size Matters From a business standpoint, the most attractive aspect of Wikipedia might be the fact that unpaid volunteers create and edit most of the content. But to consumers, the site’s greatest [...]

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Most but not all entries in Encyclopedia Virginia have a time line. (This one, for instance, does not.) At first, a time line seems like a simple thing; it takes a subject and reduces it to days, months, and years, succinctly outlining the life of a poet, or a governor, or a civil-rights activist. Still, [...]

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If you look at our blog entries individually, you will see a “Welcome to reader-supported content” balloon toward the bottom of the page but above the comment box. This balloon and the badge underneath is part of a “micro-patronage” system that is currently under development to help content providers (newspapers, blogs, etc.) earn revenue so [...]

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Artist Rob Matthews binds Wikipedia’s featured articles in “dysfunctional physical form” as a way “to question its use as an internet resource.” The picture speaks for itself, I guess, but let me play devil’s advocate. For one, how does this “question” Wikipedia’s use as an Internet resource? Presuming one finds such a book intimidating and [...]

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Encyclopedia Virginia (Beta) is now officially live. We’re adding content every week, and we’ll use this space in part to highlight newly posted entries. You can also check the blog’s sidebar for updated content, or subscribe to the encyclopedia’s RSS feed, which can be particularized to the kind of content you prefer to read. In [...]

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I was sitting on my front porch the other morning reading Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. It was a beautiful morning—clear, warm, breezy—and with my coffee and a decent view of the Blue Ridge, I was in heaven. So it seemed appropriate that I stumbled onto this passage, in which a traveling salesman visits [...]

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