AJU Essay Project
AJU Essay Project... What is it?
In order to become a professional art historian, goldsmith, jewelry appraiser or gemologist you probably have chosen to study at one of the many education providers available to you. In the course of your study you will learn how to conduct proper research and you will write many essays to practise your research and writing skills. Often these essays are written with a single purpose: acquiring study credits. After an essay is marked and has gained you the necessary credits many of these papers disappear into binary space or dusty boxes. We feel that this is a waste of effort and valuable information. We wish to offer students the possibility to publish the results of their research here on AJU so that others can benefit from their hard work and enjoy the accessibility of free information.
This wish results in the AJU Essay Project, a joint venture of education providers, students and the AJU administration.
Nice, but what's in it for me?
Publishing an article on AJU will allow others to read and enjoy your work. The big bonus is that you will provide your peers with the opportunity to provide comments on your work through the discussion pages on the forum. This is worth gold to any student, getting good feedback is one of the main keys to learning.
You can form study groups with class mates or with other AJU contributors to tackle wider research fields as a collective. Being able to collaborate with others is a vital skill you will need in order to excel in your field of expertise and AJU is an excellent place to practise it. You can use the AJU Student Centre Forum to get into touch with other students.
Your articles will be immortalized here on AJU and will look very good on your portfolio. A well maintained portfolio allows possible employers a glimpse into your skills which will increase your chances on a well paid job. With a total of close to three quarters of a million page views today, not even a year after the official launch of the project, AJU is an extremely well read site considering the specific character of the content. Many industry professionals are frequent visitors. If you turn out to be a natural talent you may even write yourself into fame and glory here, you never know what can happen.
OK... and what does AJU gain from this?
AJU is a non-profit project. AJU can not and will not lay any claims on your contributions. You are the writer and YOU keep the copyright to your own texts. You simply broadcast yourself through AJU. Our goal is to gather as much information on jewelry history as we can and make it available to the public free of charge. We can use all the help we can get in order to achieve that goal. Hence this project.
Take notice that the project's content, by default, is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. If you do not want your work to fall under this license you will have to indicate this clearly. We further ask you to respect other people's copyrights, we are interested in your own work only.
Essay Requirements
1. In order to publish your essays on AJU they will have to contain relevant information to the broad study of jewelry history. This is an immense wide field of expertise and can include:
- General (art) history backgrounds such as:
- decorative styles
- political history and its relation to jewelry
- social-economic history and its relation to jewelry
- religious history and its effect on jewelry
- Cultural anthropology
- cultural specific fashion/personal adornment
- Technical history studies
- goldsmithing techniques through the centuries
- gem cutting techniques through the centuries
- Appraising studies
- Identification methods; forensic jewelry history
- Law studies on value, property, insurance, succession and commerce
- Gemology, geology, mineralogy
2. Essays have to be submitted with a bibliography attached. A note system is encouraged but not a requirement, a well listed bibliography suffices.
How to submit essays?
The first step is to acquire a forum account here. Your account will have to be activated manually as part of a procedure to keep spammers out. We regret this but such is reality these days. Please choose a user name that makes sense, this will enable the admin to recognize you as a legit applicant.
To submit an essay you will have to post it on the forum here We have an editor working on the project who will help you shaping your article into the desired format and place it on the main site. You can contact him at info@antiquejewelryuniversity.com or ask your questions on the forum
After a while you may be invited to become a faculty member which enables you to place your own articles on the site. Until then, our editor will do that for you.
We are looking forward to your contributions!
The AJU Administration