This week is Open Access week! In fact, by the time you read this it will already be Tuesday or Wednesday of Open Access Week because I’m not getting to writing this post until Monday PM Honolulu time. But regardless of how far into it you are: Happy open access week!

Open Access Week is a time to celebrate Open Access, get people involved in Open Access opportunities (like the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon) and discuss the challenges that Open Access faces in the future.

A quick google search shows that we’ve been celebrating Open Access Week on this site for at least five years. This year, I hope to spend some of this week demonstrating just how much quality open access anthropology there is online. In particular, I’d like to show that one of the biggest challenges facing open access anthropology is finding and using the huge amount of resources that are out there. In some cases, it’s possible to replace textbooks or anthologies with open access sources — or at least come pretty darn close.

The big challenge is finding a way to curate all of the available material and make it available to other people. This is something that requires time, expertise, and effort. Google searches won’t cut it anymore — we need to build a layer of curation on top of the layer of open access material that is currently available. This week, I hope to provide some examples of how this might get done.

So stay tuned, and until then — happy open access week!