King's collaborates on updated website for history society

The Society for the History of Children and Youth is pleased to announce the redevelopment of their website, hosted by King’s at www.shcy.org

“The website provides scholars with substantive intellectual content, information about opportunities in the field, and resources for teaching and connecting with other specialists,” Dr. Patrick Ryan, Associate Professor of King’s Childhood and Social Institutions program, explains.

Dr. Ryan says the heart of the website is the Features section which will include multimedia publications, essays, lectures, podcasts, video elements, and information on upcoming conferences and seminars, job opportunities, grants and fellowships.

The publications found on the site “are non-peer reviewed written, visual, and audio pieces.  They include essays, lectures, and conversations; and tend to be thick with links to other stories and sites that are relevant for whatever issues are being addressed,” Dr. Ryan explains.

Going forward, the site will hold a syllabus exchange and use the Society’s YouTube channel as a bank of 10-minute lectures on topics to assist instructors.

Dr. Ryan says the old site was primarily used as an electronic bulletin board. While there was substantive content, the site was not easily accessible on mobile devices. There were also technical limits with regards to file size.

The Society worked with King’s ITS department and particularly Tim Bugler, King’s Web Developer/Designer, to redevelop the site. One of the most important changes, Dr. Ryan says, is a switch from building the site on WordPress to using MURA, thanks to Bugler’s direction.

Dr. Ryan wishes to give special recognition to both Bugler and Carla Joubert, SHCY digital fellow and a Western University doctoral candidate in History. The three worked for over a year on the website.

While Dr. Ryan says new technology such as the website will not lessen the value of peer-review, “there would not be a field of childhood and youth history in its current form without the new technology because it linked us globally and allowed a statistically small group of scholars to work together and communicate in new ways.”

The Society was founded in 2001 and draws together thousands of scholars who study childhood and related institutions historically.  It has sponsored or held conferences on four continents.  It publishes a peer a review journal, and awards prizes for academic work in eight languages.