Ancient History Encyclopedia (AHE) is pleased to announce that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the EAGLE Portal, which will entail active collaboration and content exchange between the two organizations. EAGLE, the Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy, is a best-practice network (BPN), co-funded through the ICT-Policy Support Programme of the European Commission, which aims to create a new online archive for ancient epigraphy in Europe. As a part of the multilingual, prestigious Europeana Network, EAGLE will link and connect — using Linked Open Data (LOD) — thousands of inscriptions, photos of inscriptions, and related contextual items from European museums, libraries, archives, and multimedia collections into a single, readily-searchable platform from millions of digitized items. The project will make the vast majority of surviving inscriptions from the Greco-Roman world available for study or enjoyment. Additionally, EAGLE intends to build tools which can make the user experience dynamic and engaging.

The kind folks at NuSphere are now sponsoring us! They have provided our programming team with the latest version of their flagship product PhpED. This is going to help us greatly in programming our website and adding new features, so that our readers can enjoy an ever improving free ancient history website. Thank you very much!

Ancient History Encyclopedia (AHE) will be collaborating on future projects with Past Preservers, enlarging the creative hub between the media, heritage organizations and academic institutions. AHE’s global reach will increase public attention to archaeology, documentary programming, and educational research. Founded by archaeologists Nigel J. Hetherington and Kelly Krause in 2005, Past Preservers provides a creative space between the heritage and media worlds. They have established a production consulting team with the sole purpose of producing quality history-based, non-fiction programming by focusing on the creative aspect of each project including concept development, production, historical consulting and casting of experts and presenters. Their projects include work for major networks, such as History Channel, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel and Al-Jazeera International. At the heart of their operation are over 1400 heritage professionals from over twenty countries including archaeologists, historians, Egyptologists, classicists, conservationists, forensic biologists, anthropologists, authors, and heritage specialists.

Ancient History Encyclopedia is now on Pinterest!  Pinterest is a fine addition to our existing social media pages on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. With over 270K social media followers, AHE has a sizable and influential social media presence, and our numbers will only continue to grow. Pinterest provides AHE a new audience, and we feel strongly that Pinterest redefines the way in which people find and access information through multimedia. Pinterest is a visual discovery and social media tool, which individuals can use to find ideas for personal projects and interests. Pinterest users can browse, upload, save, and manage images –known as “pins– and other media content through collections known as “pinboards.” Not surprisingly, Pinterest is  the first social media platform to bring a “curated vibe” to its user experience. Please be sure to follow our Pinterest account and share our pins! We look forward to interacting with you there.

The new year is here (at least in many parts of the world). This is, as usual, a good time to look back and examine what we’ve achieved, but also a time to look forward. We would like to share our thoughts on the past and future of Ancient History Encyclopedia with you. Growth The last year has been excellent for Ancient History Encyclopedia. We’ve had our best year ever since we launched in 2009. A whopping 2.6 million people visited our site, viewing 5.6 million pages. In the last few months of the year, we had almost 500,000 people visiting the site every month! Almost 200,000 history enthusiasts follow us on Facebook and tens of thousands more on Twitter and Google Plus. Those are absolutely stunning numbers! Let’s put that into perspective…  Encyclopedia Britannica sold 120,000 copies in its best year (that was in 1990). Most history magazines have far fewer monthly readers than we do: Archaeology Magazine has a print circulation of 235,000 copies and 225,000 website visitors, All About History has 151,000 …

Last call for the British Museum’s outstanding exhibition: “Life and Death, Pompeii and Herculaneum,” running until September 29, 2013. Exhibition review provided by AHE contributor, Mr. James Lloyd:

We are excited to announce that the Ancient History Encyclopedia has been listed as one of 105 Indispensable Resources for Online Research by OnlinePhDProgram.org. Academic research is at the heart of any masters or doctoral program of study. While in-depth research was once confined to reference libraries and organizations with access to copies of academic journals, much of the work of original research can now be done virtually. Major repositories of academic research — like JSTOR and LexisNexis — can be searched comprehensively online, and even Google has an easy-to-use scholarly search engine. Online libraries, journals, databases, and academic search engines are great resources for graduate students, as well as people at any level of education who are conducing research projects. OnlinePhDProgram.org is dedicated to helping future doctoral candidates find the right program that meets their needs, desires, and goals. Their site offers helpful blog posts, articles, and a wealth of other information that can answer your questions about doctoral programs. We thank them for their inclusion of AHE in their list!

Today we are happy to announce that we are being sponsored by Tsohost, the company that has been hosting Ancient History Encyclopedia for several years now. This is great news as it not only saves us money, but above all it means that we can improve our service to you, with faster and better hosting. We initially chose Tsohost because they had been recommended to us, and we were not disappointed! Of course there are cheaper hosting providers around, but Tsohost really convinced us with their service. They have advised us on what hosting solution is right for us, helped us move our site (which was not that easy because it is a custom-built content management system), and they have actively supported us ever since. Every problem was resolved in a few hours, and even the founder himself sometimes answers our support tickets. We are extremely happy to have arrived at this cooperation. There are many free hosting solutions around… but instead of being anonymous and without any support, we much prefer being with our …

The Ancient History Encyclopedia is pleased to announce that we are officially listed and registered on Open Education Resources (OER). The creation and use of OER represents a shift in education that facilitates shared teacher expertise and peer-based learning. Free and open content is not only a new economic model for schools and students, but also a primary vehicle for disseminating flexible, adaptable curricula. OER is a virtual network that brings together over 44,000 tools for sharing educational material. Additionally, OER provides news and training on how to approach and access open education tools. In essence, OER are teaching and learning materials freely available for everyone to use, whether one is an educator or student. This includes full courses, modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world. Since its inception in 2009, AHE has been a non-profit educational company with a global vision: to provide the best ancient history information on the internet for free. Combining different media, subjects …