SKILLNET – Sharing Knowledge in Learned and Literary Networks

Events

27 - 29 March 2018
14:30 - 17:00
27 March: Kromme Nieuwegracht 80, room 113; 29 March: Buys Ballotgebouw (BBG), room 103

Would you like to help harvesting the metadata of hundreds of early modern letters and reflect on crowdsourcing, digital methods and scientific societies in the process?

In the afternoons of Tuesday 27 March and Thursday 29 March, 14:30-17:00 at Utrecht University (at Kromme Nieuwegracht 80, room 113, on Tuesday, and at Buys Ballotgebouw (BBG), room 103, on Thursday), there will be a crowdsourcing meeting during which we will collectively gather metadata (sender, recipient, date, place of sending, place of reception) of letters that Lunar Society members wrote to each other. The Lunar Society of Birmingham (England) was a group of intellectuals, scientists and industrialists in the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The members met and corresponded regularly to discuss issues regarding (experimental) science, industrial development and on-going projects. The metadata of the letters will be used in the Master’s thesis project ‘Links, Letters and Lunarticks’ (supervised by dr. Dirk van Miert), which investigates the benefits and problems of digital network analysis as a method to study the societal and organizational structure of private, informal scientific societies like the Lunar Society. During the afternoons a short introduction to the project will be given and besides the work on the letters there shall be plenty of room for discussion and exchange of ideas.

Interested in helping out? Please send an email to r.n.boone@uu.nl (Richelle Boone) and we will make sure there is enough coffee and tea!

Dates: 27 March 2018 & 29 March 2018