About

What is THATCamp Publishing?

This unconference is open to publishers, librarians, faculty and student scholars, archivists, museum professionals, interested amateurs, technologists, administrators, and funders from the nonprofit and for-profit sectors — any and all who want to advance publishing in and for a digital age. We can accept the first 75 registrants; anyone who registers after that will be placed on a wait list in case of cancellations.

When and where is THATCamp Publishing?

We will be meeting at Simmons College in Boston all day on Wednesday, June 19th, in advance of the annual Association of American University Presses (AAUP) meeting at the Boston Seaport Hotel June 20-22.

How much does it cost?

It’s free, thanks to our generous sponsors — Association of American University Presses (AAUP), Microsoft Research, and Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences. The organizational work is being done by Joan Fragaszy Troyano, director of the PressForward project at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media with lots of help from Bethany Fair from Simmons College.

Why THATCamp Publishing?

This is an opportunity for the publishing community to discuss the practice and trajectory of scholarly communication. Both publishers and readers face the challenges of balancing print and digital methods of development, dissemination, and consumption. Everyone is experimenting new tools, structures, and services. Let’s get together to ask questions, discuss new approaches, share experiences, create new resources, and build a community network across trade, university, library, and institutional publishing.

Sessions and speakers will be developed and decided by the community. Rather than the standard conference presentation, your particular session can take any of a number of casual and collaborative formats. You can check out the conversations and accomplishments from the 2011 THATCamp Publishing, but remember that this year can be completely different, depending on the interests of the group.

Possible topics of discussion this year include:

What kind of scholarly publishing do we need right now?
New approaches, techniques, and collaborations
Anything or Everything about Open Access
Trade publishing by cultural institutions and university presses
Publishing in the Library
Special challenges and opportunities for journals and monographs
Different ways of measuring success, such alt-metrics or impact scores
Changing methods for production
Assessing, developing, coordinating, and publicizing your publishing services
Social media and marketing of scholarly writing
Skills and training: who in your shop does what? How have you advertised, recruited, and trained?
What’s next in scholarly publishing?

What is a THATCamp?

Here are the key characteristics of a THATCamp:

It’s collaborative: there are no spectators at a THATCamp. Everyone participates, including in the task of setting an agenda or program.
It’s informal: there are no lengthy proposals, papers, presentations, or product demos. The emphasis is on productive, collegial work or free-form discussion.
It’s spontaneous and timely, with the agenda / schedule / program being mostly or entirely created by all the participants during the first session of the first day, rather than weeks or months beforehand by a program committee.
It’s productive: participants are encouraged to use session time to create, build, write, hack, and solve problems.
It’s lightweight and inexpensive to organize: we generally estimate that a THATCamp takes about 100 hours over the course of six months and about $3000 to organize.
It’s not-for-profit and either free or inexpensive (under $30) to attend: it’s funded by small sponsorships, donations of space and labor, and by passing the hat around to the participants.
It’s small, having anywhere from 25 or 50 to about 150 participants: most THATCamps aim for about 75 participants.
It’s non-hierarchical and non-disciplinary and inter-professional: THATCamps welcome graduate students, scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, developers and programmers, administrators, managers, and funders as well as people from the non-profit sector, people from the for-profit sector, and interested amateurs. The topic “the humanities and technology” contains multitudes.
It’s open and online: participants make sure to share their notes, documents, pictures, and other materials from THATCamp discussions before and after the event on the web and via social media.
It’s fun, intellectually engaging, and a little exhausting.

What is an “unconference”?

The shortest answer is this: an unconference is a highly informal conference. Two differences are particularly notable. First, at an unconference, the program isn’t set beforehand: it’s created on the first day with the help of all the participants rather than beforehand by a program committee. Second, at an unconference, there are no presentations — all participants in an unconference are expected to talk and work with fellow participants in every session. An unconference is to a conference what a seminar is to a lecture; going to an unconference is like being a member of an improv troupe where going to a conference is (mostly) like being a member of an audience. Unconferences are also free or cheap and open to all. For more information, see Wikipedia’s entry on the unconference.

Some say that the first unconference was BarCamp, which is the model for THATCamp. Read more about BarCamp at barcamp.org, radar.oreilly.com/2005/08/bar-camp.html, and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp.

Who should attend?

Anyone with energy and an interest in the humanities and/or technology.

What are “the humanities”?

Good question. Turns out there’s a legal definition! As the National Endowment for the Humanities puts it: “According to the 1965 National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, ‘The term “humanities” includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.’ ”

What is “technology”?

We suggest you read this brilliant article by Professor Leo Marx, American cultural historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept.” (Side note: those who love technology should be those who are most aware of its hazards.)

What should I propose?

Sessions at THATCamp will range from software demos to training sessions to discussions of research findings to half-baked rants (but please no full-blown papers; we’re not here to read or be read to). See the list of sample sessions at thatcamp.org/proposals/ for ideas, or come up with a creative idea of your own for a session genre or topic. You should come to THATCamp with something in mind, and on the first day find a time, a place, and people to share it with. Once you’re at THATCamp, you may also find people with similar topics and interests to team up with for a joint session.

Is a THATCamp only for scholars / grad students / librarians / archivists / programmers / instructional technologists? Can scholars / grad students / librarians / archivists / programmers / instructional technologists apply?

No to the first, yes to the second. THATCamp aims at the broadest diversity of backgrounds and skills possible.

I’m poor. How can I get funds to travel to THATCamp?

Some academic participants have mentioned that their universities will not fund any travel unless for the purpose of presenting a paper, and since there are no presentations and no papers at THATCamp, they cannot come to THATCamp. We have a few suggestions. First, you might frame your trip to THATCamp as “professional development,” if such a category exists at your organization — coming to THATCamp is definitely much more of a learning experience than a showing-off experience. Second, you might wait for a THATCamp to pop up nearby so that travel will be cheap: you can sign up for THATCamp News to be notified of new THATCamps. Third, you might consider simply organizing your own THATCamp — that way, the world will have to come to you.

How do I organize my own THATCamp?

There’s plenty of advice for THATCamp organizers on thatcamp.org/plan. After you’ve read through that, and looked through some old THATCamp websites (there’s a list at thatcamp.org), why then you can go right ahead and register a new THATCamp.

How do I sponsor THATCamp?

A limited number of sponsorships are available to corporations and non-profits. Shoot us an email at

Write the THATCamp Coordinator at with further general questions about THATCamp.