Historians of the Ottoman Empire is an online encyclopedia project whose first articles were recently published. The project aims to provide comprehensive information on the lives and works of Ottoman historians, who spent most, or at least a significant part, of their lives as Ottoman subjects. All articles will be published online as a searchable database and will be available free of charge. Once published, the articles will be kept up-to-date through constant revisions.

As a scholar of North Africa and the Middle East, I get very excited about the possibilities internet technologies open up for me and other scholars who are concerned with regions of the globe outside our national borders. The internet brings a wealth of information to my computer on a daily basis. It is true that in the early years of its development the overwhelming majority of content on the internet was American and in English, but as the rest of the world has come online in greater numbers, the internet has increasingly allowed us to transcend international borders. To cite just one example, for decades English was overwhelmingly the language of the internet. While English remains the most common language on the web, it is no longer the majority language. For several years now, there has been more non-English content on the internet than content in English. I can now read newspapers and listen to news broadcasts from North Africa at the click of a mouse button. I can even communicate easily with colleagues overseas via email, chat or, increasingly, voice over IP at very little cost.