Digital HPS Meeting Recap, 2014 Nancy, France

The 2014 Digital HPS Consortium Meeting took place from September 1st to the 3rd, in Nancy, France. The event brought together many of the Digital HPS Consortium members to discuss and further Digital HPS projects and methods. The meeting was organized by members of the University of Lorraine including Olivier Bruneau, Pierre Couchet, and Scott Walter. Additionally, Henri-Poincaré Archives (University of Lorraine & CNRS) and the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Lorraine helped support the meeting.

At the meeting, members of the consortium provided updates on their HPS projects. David Kohn, the Director of the Darwin Manuscripts Project, described the advanced stage of the project, which had digitized, transcribed, and annotated over 30,000 pieces from Darwin's library. Kohn discussed some of the ways the project is bringing new historical aspects into the consciousness of scholars. For example, historians are using the manuscripts to explore relationships such as that between Darwin and his Joseph Hooker, who apparently edited versions of The Origin of Species before it was published.

Manfred Laubichler presented "A Computational Research Systems for the History of Science," discussing how HPS projects can use digital tools to analyze, annotate, and understand historical data. Laubichler argued that these digital methods make research data available to a wider range of scholars.

Kerry Magruder of the University of Oklahoma gave an update on the ongoing work in the OU Libraries, and discussed the importance of open sources for historical projects. Adam Goldstein presented on bibliographies, and Scott Walker discussed scholarly annotation of mathematics with LATexml.

Alison Pearn from Darwin Correspondence Project was also present and engaged in the discussions. And graduate students at Arizona State University Paige Madison and Steve Elliot presented on how digital HPS and humanities organizations can use social media to further missions such as outreach. They also introduced their new social media handbook that details best practices for scholarly organizations to follow when they employ social media, which can be found in our Resources page.

Contact information for the individuals who presented at this meeting, as well as information about their projects, can be found on our Participants page of this website.

Appointed positions at the Meeting:
Steering Committee and Chairs:
Co-chair: Urs Schoepflin (Max Planck Institute)
Co-chair: Scott Walter (The Poincaré Correspondence Project, University of Lorraine)
Co-chair: Manfred Laubichler (Arizona State University)
1. Alison Pearn (Cambridge University)
2. Rick Creath (Arizona State University)
3. David Kohn (Darwin Manuscript Project)
4. Kerry Magruder (Oklahoma University)
5. Scott Weingart (Indiana University)
Recorder:
Paige Madison (Arizona State University)

It was determined that next year's meeting will be hosted by the University of Oklahoma and will be held in Norman, Oklahoma from 11 to 13 March, 2016. Organized by Kerry Magruder, Stephen Weldon and Tara Carlisle, the meeting offers an opportunity for scholars in DHPS to present their publications, tools, and methods, to exchange ideas, and to form and nurture contacts with members of the international DHPS community.

Please direct questions about the meeting to dhps@ou.edu and for information about travel, registration, accommodations, and the workshop, please visit the website: https://ou-lib-hos.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DHPS/Digital+HPS+annual+wo...