History Commons

The History Commons is a web site and organization that documents events and issues of great social and political significance, focusing primarily on events and issues from the 1970s to the present day. The History Commons operates under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license. It was originally sponsored by The Global Center, a 501(c)(3) organization, and is now operated by the Center for Grassroots Oversight, itself a 501(c)3 organization. The website was previously named Center for Cooperative Research, and was located at cooperativeresearch.org.

According to the History Commons "About" page, the purpose of the website is: "To provide a means for members of civil society to monitor the activities of powerful entities, such as governments, large corporations, and wealthy and influential individuals." And: "The Web site is a tool for open-content participatory journalism. It allows people to investigate important issues by providing a space where people can collaborate on the documentation of past and current events, as well as the entities associated with those events. The Web site can be used to investigate topics at the local, regional, or global level. The data is displayed on the Web site in the form of dynamic timelines and entity profiles, and is exportable into XML so it can be shared with others for non-commercial purposes." However, the data export feature was non-functional as of April 2008 and has not been fixed since. A "Conceptual Summary" posted on the History Commons blog elaborates on this theme: "The History Commons is a free and open space where you can collaborate with others to chronicle history, monitor powerful private interests, and conduct oversight of governments. ... The History Commons ... is people-powered and people-driven, as opposed to being driven by powerful entities that represent a very narrow band of society. Contributors to HC work together to build an online documented version of the historical record. It is a socially and politically significant exercise because it has the potential to create a version of the historical narrative that is written by a wider swath of society, and therefore serves a broader scope of interests. It is a narrative that is less subject to control by the dominant sectors of society. Contributors participate for a variety of reasons. In most cases they are people who have an acute interest in politics and who have a perspective on history and current events that is in conflict with the narrative that is broadcast by powerful interests such as governments and the major media networks. They write because they want to create a written record of alternative narratives that checks the power of these interests. This is a key element of the History Commons' 'people-driven' nature, where the diverse contributions of its users make it possible to produce a record that transcends particular ideological and social agendas."