Twenty-Fifth Year Reflections on PKP - Public Knowledge Project

"In 1998, I initiated a project that set out to make research a greater part of what constituted public knowledge. I called it a Public Knowledge project. That is, before PKP was PKP, it was PKp. The initial project arose out of a modest gift to the University of British Columbia from Pacific Press, the company that owned Vancouver’s two newspapers, the Vancouver Sun and Province. On learning of this gift to UBC, where I served as a Faculty of Education professor, I proposed that this new Pacific Press Professorship explore how the internet, with all its early promise as an “information highway,” could increase public access to research and scholarship. This would complement the Pacific Press’ journalism, I suggested, as well as advance educational goals, by expanding the storehouse of public knowledge...."