8 Many Stories Matter, So Let Us Make Them Accessible: Transforming Student Literature and Essays to Open Anthologies

As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009) said in her famous TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story, “Stories matter. Many stories matter.” The problem with a single story on a particular topic is it provides only one myopic view of an issue. While a single story could be immensely beneficial to the reader, it may only paint a fraction of pure representation. For example, for many students, their only exposure to Native American literature comes from Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian—winner of the 2007 National Book Award. However, due to his success, “Alexie has had the token status and singular voice on behalf of an entire people” (Keeler, 2018). Unfortunately, despite Alexie’s high-quality writing, his works have perpetuated Native Americans stereotypes, such as Native Americans being alcoholics; as such, “reliance on a singular perspective and narrative has its limits.”

The simple solution is to provide more stories to students—reading a plethora of diverse representations to prevent limited views of others and the world. However, for many students, their pricy literature textbook can only provide so many viewpoints, and to supply more stories would require more funds. Fortunately, Open Educational Resources (OER) not only can provide access to no-cost stories, but it can also allow teachers to curate a diverse collection of works more easily. While many school subjects have benefited from OER, literature is still a field that lacks a significant OER collection. Unless one ventures into the public domain, a collection of open literature is difficult to find.

Therefore, by creating literature assessments that lead to open publication, it creates an opportunity for a vast collection of voices to be heard and shared across the internet. Teachers can assign assessments that focus on writing certain themes or motifs—which can then culminate to an anthology of literature. Open poetry, essays, memoirs, plays, and short stories should be prevalent as much as other sections of OER. However, until open literature becomes more popular, open pedagogy can allow students to create open works not only for themselves, but also for current and future generations.

This chapter will discuss the definition of open literature, examples of some resources currently available, and procedural methods for how teachers can develop student anthologies that can be shared with the world.

What is Open Literature?

Over the past few decades, open educational resources (OER) and open access (OA) has exploded in quantity and popularity. While it is difficult to quantify the exact amount of OER that is currently available, as of this writing, the Directory of Open Access Journals has over 21,000 open journals and over 11 million open access articles. Pressbooks, an open access book directory, has approximately 8,000 books available. Openverse has more than 800 million open works (e.g. photos, images, audio) available for use.  There is an extraordinary amount of OER available, but how much of that is actually open literature? In this section, I will be explaining four types of alleged open literature: analytical, instructional, public domain, and no-cost resources. While both analytical and instructional resources are valuable and should be shared openly, they are not new literature that the public can access.

In this context, I will be referring to open literature as creative writings that are free, accessible, and retainable, which do not primarily fall under the categories of analytical nor instructional materials. Essentially, open literature refers to creative essays, poetry, short stories, novels, etc… which could be used openly for students. When searching for open English literature, the majority of the results are either analytical or instructional resources. For example, Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature, an open textbook that is comprised of several academic essays, focuses more on analysis of pre-established works. The book’s priority aim is to “[build] on the foundation established by early modern race scholarship” and less on creating new, original works (LaPerle, 2022). This is not to discredit or demean open literary criticism, but this type of material would not be considered open literature in this chapter’s definition. The same can be said for works like A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Allosso and Allosso (2019) created a handbook that is instructional, and is it intended to be a “step-by-step through the process of writing essays” and not a collection of actual essays. Instructional open books like these would also not count as open literature. In both LaPerle and Allosso and Allosso’s works, their metadata does not exclusively deem their content as literature, but as “history and criticism” and “writing and editing guides.” Both analytical and instructional resources are very important to be shared openly, but it is not exactly new original works that the public can share openly.

The public domain does have a vast collection of open literature, but it rarely has resources that are modern or current. Repositories like Project Gutenberg and Open Text Archive have thousands of texts that are creative works which are neither analytical nor instructional. However, the caveat is the works are quite dated. While there are many short stories, novels, etc… to choose from in the public domain, they are generally written before the 1920s. Recently, classic works like The Great Gatsby can be read freely with no restrictions by the public (Simon, 2021). Besides literary criticism and instruction, most English OER is a compendium of works in the public domain. Beck et al.’s (2019) Anthology of medieval literature is a good example of open literature, but “since all the works were written before 1923, they fell into the public domain” (Beck et al., 2020). While resources like Beck et al. are immensely useful for studying classic literature, it does not solve the issue of creating new original works for a rapidly changing world. Nor is it helpful to simply wait for works to enter the public domain, like The Great Gatsby, as US copyright law protects work from entering the public domain “from the moment of its creation and gives it a term lasting for the author’s life plus an additional 70 years” (Duration of Copyright, Circular 15a). Therefore, waiting for more open literature to enter the public domain is a painfully slow process, and not all new works entering the public domain will be relevant for educational purposes.

Finally, there is no-cost literature, which gives the illusion of open literature, but lacks the elements of openness with closer examination. Turlington et al. (2018) have created an immense anthology of world literature, but when it comes to their contemporary collection, the resources rely on links that relay the reader. For example, one of the selections in the textbook is Jamacia Kincaid’s Girl, a short story that was published in the New Yorker in 1978. Turlington did not receive permission to print the story into their collection, but instead they provided a hyperlink to the original source. This is by no means copyright infringement, but it is not by definition open literature. While accessing the short story is free, the material cannot be retained or reused without permission from The New Yorker, and readers have limited access to the material if they do not subscribe to the magazine. At the same time, other works are hyperlinked to websites that may or not may have permission. The classic short story, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, is also present in the Turlington et al.’s anthology, but it is hyperlinked to a website that is hosted by North Dakota State University. I often refer to these no-cost resources as “grey” because it is questionable whether this violates copyright or not. For Turlington et al., they did not reproduce the work but only provided the hyperlink. Often, many of these open literature textbooks will provide works that are hyperlinked to another source to avoid repercussions. While this does provide a way for readers to find the source for free, these resources are only accessible through either the grace of the host (e.g. The New Yorker) or will eventually be forced to be terminated due to copyright infringement. Either way, they do not constitute as open literature.

Therefore, when searching for English OER, it is either comprised of analytical or instructional content, public domain content that is mostly dated, or resources that are not by definition open and may possibly violate copyright. In the grand collection of OER, there are only a few examples of current open literature.

Examples of Current Open Literature

Before taking the steps required to develop and publish open literary anthologies, it’s important to observe some of the few organizations, editors, and authors who have laid some of the foundations in this endeavor. Hopefully, a quick summary of their motives and the results of their works will help provide a better understanding and need for further development of open literature.

The Conversation

Founded originally by Andrew Jaspan and Jack Rejtman in 2011, The Conversation is a collection of “trustworthy and informative articles written by academic experts for the general public and edited by [a] team of journalists” (The Conversation, 2024). Ranging from a wide variety of subjects, from Arts & Culture to Science & Tech, the Conversation currently has over 17,000 articles written by experts in their field. This nonprofit organization takes no advertisements and is generally funded by universities and other charitable foundations. In addition, all works published on the website are free to the public with no sign-up required. For those who are seeking open high-quality, current essays, consider browsing through this journal.

88 Open Essays – A Reader for Students of Composition & Rhetoric

In 2009, when Tina Ulrich was working as a librarian at Northwestern Michigan College (NMC), she often noticed how the students at the community college would often ask if their textbooks were available at the library. “Every semester,” said Ulrich, “they would come creeping to the desk at the library hoping against hope that they could check out their textbook for the semester and not have to pay $200 or $100. I just thought this is stupid. You don’t need a $200 textbook to learn algebra for crying out loud” (T. Ulrich, Personal communication, November 29, 2023). Frustrated, Ulrich set out to incorporate OER and no-cost materials to NMC in hopes to reduce the financial burden of textbook costs. In the following years, she had some success with grant funding, allowing some faculty members to adopt and review OER, but when the money eventually dried up, Ulrich decided to switch tactics.

Around 2017, with the help of a faculty member, Sarah Wangler, Ulrich worked on developing an open collection of essays for students to have access to. According to Wangler, professors “didn’t really find very good OER resources” that they could assign to students (S. Wangler, Personal communication, December 22, 2023). Ulrich thought, “wouldn’t it be great if we could get good writers, professional writers, to contribute an openly license essay, or a single short story, and then put them all together.” While it was initially difficult to find authors who were willing to submit work to be openly licensed, eventually Ulrich and Wangler compiled a collection from the generosity of local authors as well as magazines like Yes and The Conversation. The end result was 88 Open Essays, an open anthology published in 2019 that comprised of topics ranging from the environment to social sciences. Originally published as a Google Doc, it eventually was added to the Libretexts collection and eventually published on Pressbooks. Since then, it has been used countless times by instructors and students across the United States and possibly the world. When asked why it is important to develop open and free textbooks, Wangler replied, “education is a fundamental human right and people should not have to go through this gigantic inflated profit cycle in order to get an education.” “Do you only want rich people to be educated? Is that good for our society?” Ulrich said, with shared similar sentiments. “We are a society so there has to be a public good as well as a private good. It shouldn’t be a money-making machine.”

Perfect Timing & Right On Time by Barbara Reul

While surviving cancer is one difficult endeavor, it is another thing to write about the whole experience and publish it openly. Barbara Reul, a full professor of musicology at Luther College, received an endometrial cancer diagnosis in August 2020. After undergoing twenty-six targeted radiation therapy treatments and six rounds of chemo (all of which also occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic), Reul is fortunately cancer free and in the process of healing. During her healing process, she decided to write down her experiences and publish it as a memoir. At the same time, one of her colleagues was teaching a course called Medicine and Mortality and was interested in using her story as one of the class’s core readings. Frustrated by the traditional publishing process and with the Medicine and Mortality course approaching, Reul decided to publish her memoir openly.

When Perfect Timing was published in 2021, it went on to be shortlisted for two 2023 Saskatchewan Book Awards. It currently has around 6,000 page views on Pressbooks, and her follow-up book, Right On Time, was released in the winter of 2023. “I never thought I would ever, ever, ever write anything about myself,” said Reul in a personal interview. Her memoirs are deeply personal, going into vivid detail about her cancer diagnosis and treatment. While some readers believed it was too personal, Reul disagreed saying, “The good I’m going to give you, the bad, the ugly, the everything” (Reul, B, personal interview, Jan 11, 2024). Reul hopes publishing these memoirs openly will remove barriers to educating people on cancer. “In addition to wanting to educate and entertain, I want people to actually be inspired or moved enough to donate money to cancer research.” At the time of this writing, Reul is also in the works of developing an audiobook version of Perfect Timing, which will also be released openly.

Designing Open Literature Anthologies Through Classroom Assignments

Despite some useful open literature being available, the collection is still limited. This section will break down methodically how to develop and design an open anthology with students. Please note that this section is merely suggestive and any variants that better fit the needs and desires of the school and students are strongly encouraged.

Types of Open Literature Anthologies

One method for creating open literature in the classroom is to assign a literary project in which students will submit works that will then be published in an open anthology. It is important to make sure that students have the chance to decline the right of publication, but it will still be graded, nevertheless. A student’s decision to decline publication should not affect the overall performance of their grade. The experience of creating work for open publication should be a willing endeavor and not forced upon the instructor.

While it is ultimately up to the instructor to assign whatever collection of works they wish for the students to create, in order to improve the chance of it being discoverable and utilized, it is recommended that all works submitted for the assignment have some sort of connection—even if it is loosely connected. This overarching connection will help improve searchability in an open database. When searching in an open directory, especially when more and more content is added each day, seekers of open literature will have an easier time selecting material that has some sort of overall link with notable keyworks and titles. While 88 Open Essays has been very successful, it is probable that its search success is due to it being one the first open collection of essays available in an OER directory. Therefore, if this trend continues, having multiple anthologies called open essays will make it difficult to differentiate between the collections—thus reducing the chances of it being utilized. Ideally, the anthology should focus on a particular theme, topic, genre, or representation.

For a themed anthology, students could be asked to write on a particular sensation, emotion, or feeling that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. For example, the assignment could focus on works that only pertain to love or fear. Using very broad words allows for more avenues of interpretation—creating an infinite number of possibilities. Inversely, using a very precise keyword, like schadenfreude may be difficult for an entire class to submit material. Ultimately, it depends on the skill or challenge of the classroom, and having the students choose from a variety of possibilities may help them choose the theme that best represents their strengths. Once the theme has been established, it is up to the instructor to choose whether it is solely just essays or any sort of literary genre. If the title is called An Open Collection of Love Literature, it could be comprised of essays, poems, lyrics, plays, short stories, etc… that all resolve around the theme of love.

A topic anthology is similar to a themed anthology but focuses on a particular moment, era, or event. While it is a bit more precise than a themed anthology, depending on the topic picked, it could result in a variety of possibilities. For example, assigning a topic regarding the Covid-19 pandemic allows the students to produce whatever works they wish as long as it connects to the topic. It could be comprised of essays, poems, lyrics, plays, short stories, etc… and can have a variety of emotional outlets. Of course, the suggested topic just mentioned may be emotionally difficult to write about, as are other topics that could be assigned. It could be something tamer like Summer Vacation or Tales from Middle School. Again, it is important to provide multiple choices to the class and explore which topic would be the best fit for the assignment. All classes are different, and each will have their own prevalence towards a particular topic.

A genre anthology is perhaps the most flexible out of the choices. 88 Open Essays is an example of a genre anthology, as few of the essays are connected other than the fact that all works are essays. This choice will allow students to essentially write about anything as long as it falls under the assigned genre. The genre does not have to be essays, but an anthology of poetry, short stories, etc… However, the genre anthology may make it difficult for searchability or utilization. While in the short term, a recently released collection of open literature on short stories may gain some tractions, if the trend continues, having multiple anthologies with only the genre as a keyword may prove problematic. In addition, students may ironically struggle when given too much freedom to write about anything. By limiting their options, even slightly, students will be forced to think deeply and creatively about what they wish to write about—perhaps resulting in more unique works.

The final category is representation, which should only be used in particular circumstances when it is warranted. For example, if the collective body of students are from a particular country, like Kenya, then there could be a representative anthology comprising of Kenyan writers. This could also apply to certain ethnicities, gender, or other niche representations. This should be used only if the representation is authentic. For example, designing an anthology on indigenous literature—even if intentions are authentic—can be problematic if the representation of writers are not indigenous. As Funk and Guthadjaka (2020) notes in Indigenous Authorship on Open and Digital Platforms, “emancipatory digital technologies such as open platforms may reproduce western knowledge domination … [and while] such domination is not the explicit aim of these ‘open’ technologies which ostensibly seek to democratise access and participation, but because they are structured with western knowledge and reliant on English proficiency, they create conditions of exclusion just as they do inclusion.” Ultimately, it is up to the particular representation to create content about themselves. Otherwise, the content may be created in a different lens that does not truly represent the body that it aims to showcase. Another factor to consider is whether those who are in a certain representation want to be associated with that label. Perhaps a writer who is non-binary wants their writing to be viewed solely on their literature and not on their representation. Overall, while a representation anthology can give voice to a group of individuals not often heard in traditional publishing, it needs to be done delicately and authentically to avoid controversy.

While it is far easier to simply gather a collection of random works from students and post them online, considering creating a cohesive collection for future readers. Developing cohesion not only improves searchability but also may unite students and professors into creating one unique piece of literature.

Importance of Establishing Preexisting Conditions

I once had a professor explain to me that while they were intrigued by creating open pedagogy with their students, they were worried that the end result would be a collection of terrible work. While this does not exude confidence about their students, it is a valid point that should be addressed. It is possible, and perhaps likely, that once all of the pieces are submitted, the compendium of works will not be all high quality. Should only the most notable works be added into the anthology, or does every work need to be included?

First, art is subjective, and it is impossible to determine what would be objectively the best works in the anthology. Even if there is a unanimous consensus from students and faculty that these particular pieces are the best, it may be eviscerated by millions of differing opinions on the internet. Filtering out only a select few to be published may come off as highly subjective and biased. If the point of the anthology is to present many different and unique voices, even if works are deemed ‘bad’, they could nevertheless be a unique voice. Perhaps that ‘bad’ piece of literature may be greatly appreciated by others in the future. Being highly selective can also deter students from the overall assignment of open pedagogy. If a student knows that only a few works will actually be submitted to the open anthology, then it is likely that many will simply not try to produce good content.

At the same time, having no parameters could create a collection of illegible or offensive material that is not suitable for educational purposes. Some works may lack a cohesive narrative, appropriate grammatical structure, or may be thinly veiled replicas of established works. This can be corrected with peer review and workshops—which will be discussed in the next section. It is obviously important that works to be published must go through multiple drafts, and while some works may seem irredeemable due to their grammar, not all hope is lost. With patience and dedication from the student, work can be polished into a suitable piece. However, if the authors refuse to make reasonable changes to their piece to improve fluency, then it should be determined whether the piece is suitable to be published. Ultimately, this is at the discretion of the professor, and it needs to be pre-established that works failing to meet certain certain grammatical standards will not be publishable.

Pre-established standards for an open anthology need to be made clear to the students in order to avoid publishing offensive content. While the term offensive is subjective, the professor should make a clear distinction as to what can and cannot be accepted into the anthology. For example, violence may be tolerated in the select works, but excessive violence may be breaking pre-established standards. These standards may include restrictions on homophobia, transphobia, racism, rape, conspiracies, sexism, etc… However, these elements previously listed may be needed to tell an appropriate and respectful narrative. The nonprofit that I am a part of, Quabbin Quills, publishes yearly anthologies comprising of authors from the New England region. In our pre-established requirements for submissions, we have the following sentence: “Any material that actively promotes or encourages hatred toward any race, religion, and sexual orientation is prohibited. While violence and expletives are permissive, the piece might not be selected if it is deemed excessive” (Quabbin Quills, 2023). This requirement allows some flexibility for authors to present pieces that may be offensive, but it allows us to reject pieces that we feel are not appropriate. For each professor, their standards of ‘offensive’ will vary, but it is still important to create guidelines for students to know what the boundaries are. In addition, if pre-established standards are not created and a professor rejects a piece, then the student could have a valid complaint for unfair treatment.

Overall, creating a collection of open literature requires a degree of trust from the students that they will ultimately deliver quality work in the end. However, it is highly recommended that pre-established standards regarding grammar and offensiveness be created in order to orient students towards certain expectations.

Peer Review and Workshopping

Chen and Hendricks (2023) noted in their research that when students participate in open pedagogy, they may be more motivated to set higher standards for themselves and pay more attention to the quality of their work. Briere et al. (2022) has also noted in their research that a student’s involvement in open pedagogy can increase engagement. The theory for these characteristics is that the traditional methods of assessment are “disposable,” and as Wiley (2013) has famously put it: “They’re assignments that add no value to the world – after a student spends three hours creating it, a teacher spends 30 minutes grading it, and then the student throws it away.” When an assignment is going to be disseminated onto the internet, it becomes far more real and valuable to the public. Thus, a student may feel more inclined to produce more high-quality work. While the current research about open pedagogy engagement is encouraging, it is still a relatively new field, and more research is needed to bolster this theory. Despite that, it is still important to establish a round, or multiple rounds, of either peer review or workshops to improve the quality of the work. It is extremely unlikely that submitted works will be perfect on the first submission.

Briere et al. (2022) used a useful model when it comes to peer review and open pedagogy. In their assignment, students had to create an artifact that educated the general audience “of some topic that is important to cognitive development” (KT Assignment, 2022). Once the draft of the artifact was created, it was submitted for peer review. From there, “peers had one week to complete the review and its quality contributed to their grades. Students then had a week with feedback to revise their artifacts. Those who received minimal feedback or were hoping to receive more feedback posted their artifacts in a discussion thread for live class review” (Briere et al., 2022). Afterwards, students had one more month to finalize their works before submission. When the students completed the course, they had the option to submit their artifacts to an open repository hosted on the university’s website.

While Briere et al.’s example was pertaining to design artifacts that could be used for knowledge transfer, the model is a good starting point for designing a successful collection of work. Once students have completed their first draft of their work, it can then be shared with one or multiple peers for a review while using a rubric. Students should be looking for not only grammatical errors, but also the cohesion of the piece, the theme conveyed to the audience, and emotions brought forth by the work. Once peer review has been established, students can request even more peer review, or can have the piece further workshopped with the whole class. After notes have been applied, students will have time to further polish their works until final submission. For more in-depth resources on the peer review process or rubric, try Glatfelter and Stockholm’s (2021) Peer Review Kit: A Resource for Educators for more information. As mentioned in the previous section, if a student is not willing to take reasonable notes from their peers nor professor, or if the student failed to rectify offensive content that was found in their piece, then selection toward the anthology might not be recommended.

Additional Works to Add to the Anthology

Once the work has been submitted, there are still additional sections that should be created. For example, in 88 Open Essays, before the readings, there was an introduction, acknowledgements, a message to instructions and students, and an introduction about the particular edition (Wangler & Ulrich, 2021). While the beginning of the open anthology does not need to have these elements, it is useful to have something like an introduction and other useful notes that the reader may find helpful. Villarreal’s (2019) An Open Companion to Early British Literature, added a section at the beginning to explain Open Pedagogy, the theory and practice, so readers can understand more precisely how and why this book was designed. Ultimately, it is up to the students and professor to determine what should be written at the beginning. Collectively, it is important to determine what would be essential for the reader to know as well as what legal notes—such as copyright licensing—the reader should be aware of.

In addition to introductory work, assignments and other supplemental materials can be added throughout the work. This will take a considerable amount of time compared to just compiling an anthology, but these additions can be a valuable tool if used as an educational resource. For example, Villareal (2022) utilized her students to create open assignments, such as introductions, question banks for tests, digital learning objects, and annotations. Although time-consuming, these additional elements can add more value to the works as well as a stronger sense of ownership from the students who created the anthology.

It is recommended that if additional material is added, there should be an editor-in-chief who can make sure all works are written in the same style and clearly convey the information. This can be done by the professor, or it can be done by a student who shows exemplary skill in this field. These additional materials and roles can either be graded in part with the submitted pieces, or it can be bonus work to improve one’s grade.

Selecting Licenses

If students choose to have their work added into the anthology, it is important for them to select which creative commons license they prefer. Creative Commons (CC) licenses allow an author to release a work to the internet with a variety of copyright protections. If a CC license is not noted in the work, then by default, the author has initiated that all of their copyrights are reserved, and that the work cannot be shared openly. By selecting a CC license, the author has now amended their rights to be more flexible in order to share the work openly. For example, if an author chooses a CC BY license, then that means the public has the right to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the work as long as they provide attribution (BY) to the author. Other than work being in the public domain, or if the author declares the work as public domain (CC0), CC BY provides the most freedom of use for the public. Inversely, the license CC BY NC ND is one of the most restrictive licenses, other than traditional copyright, which restricts the user from making changes to the work and using it for commercial purposes. Below is a full breakdown of all the CC licenses that are available:

“Identifying Creative Commons Licenses” from Bentley University Library

For publication, there is no definitive answer as to which license is best—as it depends entirely on the wants of the author. If an author is very concerned about the work being used as a way for companies to gain profit, then they should pick a license with a noncommercial element. If an author does not want any changes or modifications to the work, then they should add a No Derivatives element. For someone who simply does not care about what happens to the work in the future, simply adding the attribution element is recommended. I have a difficult time recommending CC0 because I believe it is important for people to be credited for their work. However, if the author does not want their identity to be known, then that is also an option. Overall, it is important for the professor to explain the types of licenses in detail so the students can make an informed decision. A great tool to determine which license is best for the author is to visit Creative Commons’ License Chooser. Once the Creative Commons license has been established and is released online, it is incredibly difficult to change or retract it afterwards. Make sure that students understand and consent to their preferred license, and if the students feel uncomfortable making a decision, then perhaps they should reconsider publishing openly.

Publication of the Open Anthology

There are many options to choose from when deciding how to publish the material. The three most common methods for publication are local repositories, cloud storage like Google Drive, and external repositories like Pressbooks. Each method has its pros and cons with each varying in accessibility and pricing.

Local repositories, such as the school’s website, are the simplest and cheapest method to host open literature. All work can be converted to a word document or a searchable PDF and be attached as a file. Depending on the size of the file, this may take up a sizeable amount of bandwidth—especially if graphics are used. This is a discussion to have with those who manage the school’s website and see if these files are suitable to be hosted online. While the file may not be easily discoverable by the internet as a whole, notifying people of the file’s URL can help spread knowledge of the resource. Over time, the file may appear in search engines, and experimentation with search engine optimization (SEO) may improve hits.

Another method is to save the file on a cloud storage such as Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. Cloud storage does not require any data to be saved locally on school servers, and most people can access the file provided they have the cloud link. With Google Drive allowing up to 15GB and Microsoft OneDrive allowing 5GB for their free storage capacity, it should be able to easily host the published anthology (Hale, 2022). Once uploaded to the cloud, it is important to set the file’s accessibility to everyone—otherwise, access will be limited. However, some drawbacks are that some schools with cloud accounts will not allow files to be shared with anyone—limiting it to people only in certain networks. Ulrich also noted in a personal interview that some K12 school servers would block access to 88 Open Essays when it was hosted originally on Google Drive—requiring certain permissions. Despite this, cloud storage can be a free and effective method to share resources.

Finally, there is the option to publish the material through external repositories like Pressbooks and Libretexts. Pressbooks allows users to upload and edit their material onto the Pressbook directory. Both 88 Open Essays and Reul’s memoirs were first published in Pressbooks, with Ruel saying that the editor and publishing software is similar to Microsoft Word (Reul, B, personal interview, Jan 11, 2024). When the book is published with this platform, it becomes open content and is searchable in the website’s directory. However, a monthly subscription to Pressbooks can be expensive. While there is a free trial for Pressbooks, it only allows one book to be published and the user has limited access to all of the publishing features (Pressbooks plans & pricing, 2023). Libretexts works similar to Pressbooks—allowing users to upload their open textbooks to an online repository. According to Josh Halpern, chief operation officer at Libretext, their repository “is divided into Campus Bookshelves and community Bookshelves. Any higher ed or secondary school instructor is welcome to have a custom book placed on the Campus Bookshelves (subject to a limit of 5 books per institution without the institution joining our Network). The book must conform with LibreTexts formatting and carry an open copyright” (personal interview, December 28, 2023). While uploading to Libretexts’ repository may seem complicated, the organization is willing to assist. Simply contact them at info@libretexts.org.

There is no correct method when it comes to publishing or uploading an open anthology to the internet. It is recommended to weigh the pros and cons of either method as well as conduct additional research into each option before making a decision.

Conclusion

Developing an open anthology of written student work is a relatively new field. At the same time, grading a collection of student works and presenting them openly to other students, faculty, and parents is not. This process of openly publishing a student anthology is simply expanding the range of the audience—albeit quite a larger range. However, this expansion will put more emphasis on the students’ work to be more polished, refined, and of substance. Whatever the student creates is not just a letter grade determined by one person in a closed setting, but a representation of their thoughts and feelings for the world to see. While this can be daunting, this can also be a great opportunity for students to contribute to society—providing a valuable resource that can be used again and again. Many stories matter, and open literature allows for so many additional voices to be heard. Consider providing students with the means to do so.

References

Adichie, C. N. (2009, October 7). The danger of a single story. TED Talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/transcript

Allosso, S.F. & Allosso, D. (2019). A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project. https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/writinghandbook/

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