On Saturday 17 September,  HIDDEN HISTORIES: SYMPOSIUM ON METHODOLOGIES FOR THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE HUMANITIES c.1949-1980, will talke place in UCL, sponsored by HKFZ and UCLDH.  Presentations include, in the following running order:

• Opening Keynote: Beyond chronology and profession: discovering how to write a history of the Digital Humanities, Willard McCarty, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London; Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney.

• Knowledge Spaces and Digital Humanities, Claudine Moulin, Universitaet Trier, Germany

• Unwriting the history of Humanities Computing, Edward Vanhoutte, Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature – Ghent, Belgium

• Crowd sourcing: beyond the traditional boundaries of academic history, Melissa Terras, Dept. Information Studies, UCL

• Different stories to be lived and told: recovering Lehmann James Oppenheimer (1868-1916) for the narrative of the Irish Arts & Crafts movement (1894-1925), James G.R. Cronin, School of History & Centre for Adult Continuing Education, University College Cork, Ireland.

• Oral History and acts of recovery: humanizing history?, Andrew Flinn, Dept. Information Studies, UCL

• Lost origins of Information Science, Vanda Broughton, Dept. Information Studies, UCL

• Plus ça change: a historical perspective on the institutional context of Digital Humanities,  Claire Warwick, Dept. Information Studies, UCL

• (Virtual presentation) DH pioneers and progeny: some reflections on generational accomplishment and engagement in the Digital Humanities, Ray Siemens, Faculty of Humanities, University of Victoria

• Closing Keynote Data vs. Text: forty years of confrontation, Lou Burnard, Oxford University Computing Services (Emeritus)

• Discussion: towards an oral history of Computing in the Humanities, Chaired by Anne Welsh and Julianne Nyhan, Dept. Information Studies, UCL

Thanks to funding from UCLDH and HKFZ, we are now able to invite approximately 10 extra participants, waive their cover fee, provide them with a light lunch and invitation to our evening reception (beginning at c.18:00 on Saturday 17 September). Please contact Julianne Nyhan and Anne Welsh directly if you are interested in attending: places will be allocated on a ‘first-come, first-served’ basis. Unfortunately places are otherwise by invitation only but podcasts / videos of some presentations will be posted online after the event.

We are delighted to report that Julianne Nyhan and Anne Welsh, of UCL Information Studies and UCLDH have been awarded funding from the University of Trier’s Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschungszentrum (HKFZ) for a project entitled ‘Digital Humanities as Wissensraum: uncovering hidden histories (c. 1949-1980)’.

The application of computing to the Humanities is not new and can be traced back to at least 1949, when Fr Roberto Busa began researching the creation of an index variorum of some 11 million words of medieval Latin in the works of St Thomas Aquinas and related authors. Notes and contributions towards a history of the computer in the humanities have appeared in recent years; however, our understanding of such developments remains incomplete and largely unwritten.

Anne and Julianne will gather and make available sources to enable the social, intellectual and cultural conditions that shaped the early take up of computing in the humanities to be investigated. The project will draw on an interdisciplinary method bundle from oral history, digital humanities and historical-cultural studies. With the aim of capturing memories, observations and insights that are rarely recorded in the scholarly literature of the field they intend to carry out interviews with ‘pioneer’ or ‘early adopter’ scholars and practitioners from c. 1949 until 1980 (that is, from main frame computing to the coming of the personal computer).

An international symposium in summer 2011 will address all aspects of the project’s methodology as well as bring together a small group of ‘early adopter’ scholars to discuss and record the early days of DH. This will be followed by online and print publications to support future research into the topic.

This should be a great initiative and we at UCLDH are very much looking forward to taking part in it. Watch this space for announcements of the project’s website, Advisory Board and the symposium.

ISKO UK in cooperation with the UCL Department for Information Studies are holding the first event of 2010.

Three invited speakers will discuss projects undertaken by the Natural History Museum, liberating data about all living species to the public as well as to scientists.  Organizing information and collections for the living world.    Further details of the programme and registration can be found at: http://www.iskouk.org/living_world_mar2010.htm

It’s £5.00 to include refreshments, and wine and nibbles after, but is free to all students and to UCL staff.