Madame de Graffigny, ‘femme de lettres’

Graf_sig_bck

Madame de Graffigny, signed by Levêque, in Jean Restout, ‘Galerie française’ (Paris, 1771), vol. 1, p. 27 (source of image: The Voltaire Foundation).

Today’s publication in EMLO of the correspondence of Françoise de Graffigny (1695–1758), the pioneering French writer and salon hostess, heralds the inaugural catalogue in an exciting new partnership between the Voltaire Foundation and Cultures of Knowledge. Following an agreement made earlier this year, metadata has been prepared from the Voltaire Foundation’s exquisitely and meticulously produced edition, Correspondance de Madame de Graffigny, ed. †J. A. Dainard and English Showalter, 16 vols (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1985– ) for publication in our union catalogue.

Preparatory work on this calendar was carried out in its entirety during the closing month of CofK’s second phase and involved Stephen Ashworth working on site at the Voltaire Foundation to input metadata in collaboration with EMLO staff, while scholarly input and oversight was provided by de Graffigny’s editor English Showalter and the Foundation’s in-house editorial team. We hope very much indeed that you will consult the edition itself; Madame de Graffigny’s letters are of particular interest to scholars for their use of everyday language — the correspondence is conducted entirely in French — and, in their genuine spontaneity, they offer a unique glimpse into the social, literary, and political issues of eighteenth-century France.

Tycho Brahe: the supernova super star

1024px-Tycho-supernova-xray

Tycho’s Supernova Remnant (source of image: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J.Warren & J.Hughes et al.).

As our Digital Project Managers conduct a game of international musical chairs (more of this in a forthcoming blog), we would like to draw your attention to the Tycho Brahe correspondence catalogue which is available now for consultation within EMLO. Publication of this metadata is a truly stellar achievement (please excuse the pun) and one we are thrilled to be able to celebrate at this particular juncture.

Whilst researching his Cambridge University Press monograph, Bearing the Heavens. Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century, Professor Adam Mosley assembled a large quantity of metadata on astronomical correspondence from the later decades of sixteenth and early years of the seventeenth centuries. In providing this metadata for publication in EMLO, Professor Mosley has done significantly more than contribute the first instalment of what we intend will become a representative archive of important astronomical correspondence within the union catalogue. His work has also helped pioneer the manner in which a ‘legacy’ dataset may be enhanced and prepared for upload by a CofK-funded Digital Fellow using EMLO-developed tools and procedures under the guidance of the specialist scholar. Indeed, so successful was the pilot approach with Tycho — in which our inaugural Digital Fellow, Rose Hedley, worked under Professor Mosley’s supervision — that it is used now on a routine basis to prepare EMLO metadata for upload.

1024px-Tycho_Cas_SN1572

Tycho Brahe’s map of the constellation Cassiopeia showing the position of the supernova of 1572 (source of image: Wikimedia Commons).

The Tycho catalogue, which contains metadata of the letters published in J.L.E. Dreyer’s 1913–1929 edition Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera Omnia, is made up currently of 498 letters, which link directly to printed copies where these are available on the Internet Archive. The catalogue is to be supplemented later this year by metadata for additional letters not published in the Opera Omnia, once again under Adam’s expert supervision; we’ll let you know when this enhancement is made, and, in the meantime, we hope very much that you enjoy the bright dawn of EMLO’s astronomical letters and trust you’ll be as excited as we are to know that Tycho is set to be the trail-blazer for a rapidly lengthening procession of early modern greats.

Mellon funds Phase III of Cultures of Knowledge!

We are delighted to announce the award to Cultures of Knowledge of a third round of funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This grant of $744,000 will take Early Modern Letters Online [EMLO] through another two years of development, from April 2015 to March 2017. We are deeply grateful to the Foundation — and to all our partners, contributors, and team members — for their invaluable support and continued confidence in the significance of this rapidly growing project.

Phase I website

The CofK Phase I website, with our seven founding catalogues.

From its inception in 2009, Cultures of Knowledge [CofK] has evolved continuously. During Phase I (2009–12), the aim of creating the nucleus of a union catalogue moved from the periphery to the centre of the project. During Phase II (2013–14), the aspirations for EMLO evolved from creating a finding-aid to devising a suite of digital tools for collecting, standardizing, merging, publishing, navigating, analysing, and visualizing unprecedented quantities of epistolary metadata. The core objective of Phase III (2015–17) is to complete the evolution of EMLO from a resource designed, built, and populated in Oxford to one designed, built, and populated collaboratively.

Nicole Coleman describes EMLO at the COST Conference

Nicole Coleman from Stanford’s Humanities+Design describes EMLO at the COST Action Digital Humanities Conference in March 2015.

The ultimate aspiration of the project is now to create a platform for radically multilateral scholarly collaboration — a ‘scholarly social machine’ — which can furnish an entire community of scholars and repositories with the means of piecing back together the millions of scholarly letters scattered across and beyond a continent during the early modern period. Once developed for such a purpose, this technology can be applied to earlier and later periods, and to the documentation of other forms of learned exchange, while the workflows and cultures created can be repurposed to bring other communities of expertise to bear on analogous problems.

Working hard at the Digital Humanities Training School, 22-25the March 2015, co-organised by COST Action IS1310, CofK, and Huygens ING.

Working hard at the Digital Humanities Training School, 22-25 March 2015, co-organised by COST Action IS1310, CofK, and Huygens ING.

In pursuing these ambitious goals, the further development of EMLO will be informed by discussions coordinated by the new COST-funded, pan-European network, ‘Reassembling the Republic of Letters, 1500–1800’, chaired by CofK’s Director, Professor Howard Hotson, from April 2014 to April 2018. Together, CofK and the COST network are designed to produce a community designed, user-tested blueprint for a transformative piece of transnational digital infrastructure capable of harvesting and analysing data on an unparalleled scale, which will form the core of the further large-scale applications needed to fund its full development.

CofK’s agenda in Phase III is built around four core activities.

I. Metadata acquisition through community building:

II. Automating collaborative metadata creation based on Linked Data:

  • Objective: to increase the efficiency of editing, matching, and merging new data from all sources through semi-automation of mechanical aspects of workflows, thereby preparing for high-volume contributions and uploads.
  • Components: publishing EMLO as controlled-access Linked Data; semi-automating the standardization and matching of records in data entry, in existing datasets, and within existing EMLO data to enhance records and resolve any data fusion problems.

III. Visualization of epistolary and prosopographical metadata

  • Objectives: to integrate existing means of visualizing epistolary metadata, to develop new means of visualizing prosopographical metadata, and to explore use of visualization for interrogating and searching all data on EMLO.
  • Components: integrating components of Stanford’s second-generation visualisation tool, Palladio, into EMLO’s user interface for visualizing epistolary metadata; enhance the prosopographical element begun in Phase II and explore cutting-edge visualizations of this complex data.

IV. Events, dissemination, and networking

  • Objectives: to experiment with means of engaging both a local and an increasingly dispersed contributor community through Mellon-funded outreach events, and participating as required in COST-funded travel, training schools, and conferences.
  • Components: Online exhibitions and outreach; local community engagement; EMLO user engagement.
  • Partners: contributors providing material and resources for the creation of digital exhibitions.

Here at CofK HQ we are hugely excited about everything in store for 2015. To keep up to date with the latest news you can follow us on Twitter (@cofktweets) and sign up to our mailing list. If you have metadata on early modern letters that you would like to publish on EMLO, please get in touch with us for an informal chat. Learn more about us on the CofK, EMLO and COST websites.

Q&A: What is a Digital Project Manager anyway?

Elizabeth Williamson

With only a few days left to apply for the two jobs currently available at Cultures of Knowledge, I wanted to provide a little more detail on the EMLO team and what it’s like to be a Digital Project Manager and a Projects Administrator for this fast-growing and exciting enterprise.

How would you summarise the role of the DPM?

It is a really wonderful post, very varied and stimulating! The position bridges different fields – project management, editorial, technical, scholarly, promotion – though we have a wide and very talented team of specialists, so my main job is coordinating their work to keep every aspect in service of the project as a whole. We have specialist systems developers and a skilled digital editor who, with my guidance, progress the substance of the technical and editorial agendas respectively.

What’s it like to work for Cultures of Knowledge?

It’s a fantastic team and we’re all really passionate about the project. In the History Faculty we have a project office where the two new recruits will be based, and an editorial office which houses our Digital Editor Miranda Lewis, visiting scholars, and our team of Digital Fellows. We work with some great developers in Oxford and internationally, plus a postdoc in Leiden and editorial collaborators all around the world. It’s important that the DPM provides a core presence for the team; that’s why I’m handing the role to a new person, as I’m moving to the USA for personal reasons.

How technical is your role?

I’d say that currently I do a lot of managing of the technical agenda and specifying of needs, but that doesn’t require specialist knowledge of the coding languages themselves as we have a Technical Strategist who advises on structural choices, and we also have the new post of Technical and Community Manager coming on board imminently. So I don’t need to know how MongoDB or node.js work, for example, but I do need a general knowledge of our systems, what they do, what their limits are, and to be able to assist the editor in determining what is needed in terms of development. It’s about translating the requirements of the scholars and editors to the technical team, and helping to ensure that work moves forward on time and on spec.

What do you find yourself doing most often?

As said, managing the technical agenda and specifying needs is central. There is also a large role in representing the project, online and offline, and promoting/explaining EMLO to the scholarly community. I love this part, and it will be expanding further. The post requires an understanding and overview of each aspect of EMLO and Cultures of Knowledge, in order to help steer the group individually and as a whole. It might be bouncing ideas for editorial workflows with our Digital Editor, communicating with potential collaborators explaining why they might want to put data on EMLO, outlining project milestones with the team, or drawing up feedback for a technical tool. There’s also a need for reporting to our funders, the Mellon Foundation, and strategizing to explore future options, including funding applications. But on the whole I’d say a large part of my role is anticipating and understanding needs, organising, and communicating.

How does CofK relate to EMLO?

EMLO (Early Modern Letters Online) is the union catalogue and digital platform that the research project Cultures of Knowledge created and runs. We work with many different contributors to gather, standardise, and centralise metadata on early modern letters, including curating it ourselves. Have a browse of this website and/or EMLO itself to find out more: emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

How does CofK relate to the COST Action network?

These are two separate projects, but they benefit each other. CofK is one voice in the wider COST network, and our Director and the project were also centrally involved in the proposal. We were also the local hosts and co-organisers for a recent multifaceted COST event, comprising a conference, set of meetings, and digital humanities training school. The network itself is made up of scholars, archivists, librarians, and technologists from over 30 countries, coming together over four years to collaborate on all aspects of rolling out truly international infrastructure to facilitate the reassembly of the epistolary material of the republic of letters.

How can I find out more about the COST Action?

Check out the website here, beautifully designed and constructed by Density Design at Politecnico di Milano.

What can you tell us about the COST-CofK administrative post?

This is a fantastic opportunity to be involved at ground level in both projects. It’s 0.6 FTE so would work well around other family or work commitments. Part of their time will be spent supporting the new Digital Project Manager at CofK with all sorts of administrative and financial tasks concerning EMLO, from helping run events, to helping process our team of Digital Fellows, to keeping detailed budget logs. The rest will be dedicated to the COST network; this is important work, and would require developing a good understanding of COST’s rules and requirements in order to communicate with Action members, advising them as needed on matters like reimbursement eligibility, setting up contracts and payments for activities such as website development and video production, and working with local event coordinators in the network. The ideal candidate will need a good head for figures, the ability to digest complex information, and an eye for detail. The scholarly work and actual activity of the network is well distributed amongst several key individuals, like Working Group Leaders and the Short Term Scientific Mission Coordinator, so you’ll be supporting – and be supported by – a highly engaged and skilled team.

Sounds great! How do I apply?

The deadline for both positions is midday on 8th April. Please ensure you have your application in by then! Further particulars and a link to the application form is here for the Project Manager, and here for the Projects Administrator.

Good luck, and Happy Easter!

COST logo

COST Digital Humanities Conference: Reassembling the Republic of Letters

UPDATE 16/03/2015: Registration now closed. Watch this space for news of the new COST website.

We are delighted to announce that limited spaces for members of the public have now been released for the forthcoming conference of the COST Action ‘Reassembling the Republic of Letters’! We’d love to see you there!

Conference: Reassembling the Republic of Letters, COST Action Digital Humanities Conference
Date: 12pm Sunday 22nd – Monday 23rd March 2015
Location: St Anne’s College, University of Oxford
Registration fee: £16
Registration: http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/product.asp?compid=1&modid=5&catid=425
Programme: COST_Conference-Programme_22-23March2015

In order for non-Action members to attend the conference, you must sign up via the link above by Friday 13th March 2015 and must pay the mandatory refreshments fee of £16 to cover lunches and refreshments. You are welcome to purchase the Sunday conference dinner or Monday buffet dinner, and limited accommodation at St Anne’s is also available – please purchase asap via the link above. Please indicate on the registration form if you are not intending to stay for both days, however, the refreshments fee is a subsided flat rate for all delegates, regardless of whether attending for the full 1 1/2 days. Additional accommodation options can be found at http://www.universityrooms.com/en/city/oxford/home.

As of March 2015, 30 countries have joined the COST Action, and over 70 representatives from the fields of history, literature, archival study, digital humanities, IT, librarianship, editing, and design will be gathering in Oxford for the network event. Come and join the conversation!

Further details on the COST network: Between 1500 and 1800, the evolution of postal communications enhanced the capacity of ordinary men and women to scatter correspondence across and beyond Europe. This epistolary exchange helped knit together an imagined community known to contemporaries as the ‘republic of letters’, an international, knowledge-based civil society, crucial to that era’s intellectual breakthroughs, and formative of many of modern Europe’s values and institutions. Ironically, the exchange of letters which created this community also dispersed the documentation required to study it, posing enormous difficulties for historians of the subject ever since. The key insight of this project is that the ongoing revolution in digital communications can provide a fresh solution to the scholarly problems created by the previous evolution of postal communications. This project is therefore dedicated to designing open-access and open-source digital infrastructure capable of facilitating the radically multilateral collaboration needed to reassemble this scattered documentation and to support a new generation of scholarly methods and research questions.

Further details on the event: This multi-faceted event combines Working Group meetings and a public-facing two-day conference, with the aim of providing all participants with a comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of current developments relevant to the network. Running alongside these, a digital humanities Training School will induct newcomers into the current state of the field. The conference is composed of a series of brief ‘flash presentations’, which present problems or developing solutions relevant to some of the key items in each Working Group’s agenda. Please see the conference programme above.

Please note that members of the public can only attend the Conference (i.e. 12pm on Sunday 22nd to the end of Monday 23rd), and not the Training School or Action meetings.

Please direct any queries to cost[at]history.ox.ac.uk.

Update! We’re hiring a new Administrator and a Digital Project Manager

CofK and COST Administrator

UPDATE! 10.03.2015: We are delighted to announce that a post is now available for a part-time administrator (0.6 FTE), working on Cultures of Knowledge and the COST Action network ‘Reassembling the Republic of Letters‘. Do you have administrative and finance experience? Would you like to work with a dedicated and friendly team on two major digital history projects? Then take a look at the further details and apply here!

Digital Project Manager

We are excited to announce that we are seeking a full-time project manager for Cultures of Knowledge, tenable from April 2015 to March 2017. Do you love early modern letters? Are you passionate about the possibilities of the digital humanities in our connected world? We’d love to hear from you!

This is a unique opportunity to help lead one of Oxford University’s largest and most exciting digital humanities projects. As Digital Project Manager of Cultures of Knowledge, you will coordinate the development of our flagship union catalogue, Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO), liaising between our technical and editorial teams and helping to coordinate our expanding community of contributors.

EMLO collaborates with a growing range of individual scholars, projects, editions, publishers, and repositories in order to bring together many tens of thousands of records on early modern learned correspondence, allowing manuscript, print, and digital resources to be cross-searched in a single, central, open-access, online catalogue. Further, by standardising huge quantities of person, place, and letter records, we are opening up unprecedented opportunities for analysing, visualising, and exploring early modern letters and the international intellectual networks documented by them.

The Project Manager anchors a vital role at the very centre of this project. Reporting to Project Director Professor Howard Hotson, and supported by a part-time administrator, the successful candidate will ensure that all aspects of Cultures of Knowledge are delivered on time, on spec, and on budget. You will be an excellent communicator with superb organizational skills and a higher degree relating to the early modern period, the digital humanities, or project management. No specialist technical or coding skills are required, but you will have some understanding of, and a keen interest in, the use of digital technologies in humanistic research. You will be able to juggle competing priorities, and represent the project with enthusiasm and dedication.

As the current post holder I can tell you that this is a fascinating and stimulating position, working alongside fantastic people – if you are passionate about the digital, the historical, or the editorial (ideally all three!), and have excellent organizational and people skills, then please do apply!

Further particulars can be downloaded from the University website. Please address any queries to the current Project Manager, Dr Lizzy Williamson (elizabeth.williamson[at]history.ox.ac.uk). To apply, please submit a supporting statement and CV on the University website, to arrive not later than 12.00 noon (GMT) on 8th April 2015.

Project update: new EMLO calendar and new CofK podcasts available

New calendar: Joseph Justus Scaliger

We are delighted to announce the publication of our newest calendar in EMLO, that of the 1,669 letters of Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540 – 1609). In 2012, the eight-volumed edition of The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540–1609) published by the esteemed Librairie Droz, Geneva, under the direction of Max Engammare, was launched in style at the Divinity School of Oxford’s Bodleian Library at a reception hosted by Cultures of Knowledge. We are delighted now, through our continued collaboration with the Librairie Droz, to be able to make available within EMLO the metadata for this extensive correspondence.

Continue reading →

New EMLO catalogue: the correspondence of Athanasius Kircher

Hard on the heels of the recent EMLO redesign and the publication of metadata for c.20,000 largely Protestant letter records originating in the Dutch republic, here at Cultures of Knowledge we are especially thrilled today to be celebrating the release of a major Catholic catalogue of Italian correspondence, that of the Jesuit polymath and scholar Athanasius Kircher. This important occasion is the result of a long-standing partnership between Cultures of Knowledge and the esteemed and innovative Stanford-based project Mapping the Republic of Letters.

Continue reading →

EMLO re-launch! New website, new catalogues, and old friends

It gives us huge pleasure to announce the re-launch of Early Modern Letters Online – EMLO – our union catalogue of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth- century letters, comprising of a complete aesthetic makeover for the website and the release of nine new collections focused on significant figures of the republic of letters.

Continue reading →