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Vanishing Bits & Bytes Conference

Events

What electronic information should be preserved?

How can electronic information be preserved?

Who should preserve the electronic information?

Although UT-Texas Medical Center holds a health informatics conference every year, this year’s offering is of particular interest to us on the other end of the spectrum, and hopefully, a much needed crash course in our responsibility to electronic materials. Entitled Vanishing Bits and Bytes: Preserving Digital Information. Speakers will include Clifford Lynch of Coalition for Networked Information, Victoria Reich of LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) and Samuel Kaplan of the Texas Medical Center. It takes place May 8, 2006 at the UT School of Nursing, Houston. More information is available here.

EEBO and Scholarship

Digitization
This call for papers came across the SHARP email list, and I think it will yield some really interesting work. I also think that topics of this sort will be sure to pop up for years to come, as EEBO, EECO, digital Evans and other digital library projects make these primary texts incredibly accessible, at least to those with institutional subscriptions to these very pricy resources. Longitudinally speaking, I’m curious if the habits of those doing research at institutions with access have become radically different to those doing research without. Moreover, I  wonder if their approach to  using physical materials has changed.
 
 
CALL FOR PAPERS: EEBO and Early Modern Studies

Since 1998, Early English Books Online (EEBO) has given scholars and
students  ‘instant access’ to over 125,000 sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century English books. Books in research libraries across the
world can now be read at any time and in any place; moreover, it reaches
readers who, because of their status or their geography, have traditionally
found it difficult to access these rare book collections. By bringing early
printed books into any library, into the academic office, into the
classroom, even into the home, EEBO has changed how scholars and students
study these texts.

But how much impact has EEBO had on research and on teaching? What have
scholars and students gained? What have they lost? How does EEBO fit with
the renewed attention to the materiality of the early modern text and the
increasing interest in the history of early printing and publishing? Just
how scholarly are the technologies and structures underlying EEBO? What kind
of relationship should there be between EEBO and academia? How should EEBO
develop?

Following on from a successful international conference on EEBO held in
Bath, UK, in September 2005, we invite proposals from scholars engaged in
any area of early modern studies (e.g., literature, philosophy, political
science, history, history of science, of medicine, etc.) for 10-15 papers on
the effect of EEBO on scholarship outlining personal techniques or on
methods and experiences of using EEBO as a teaching tool.

Please send proposals (max. 250 words), along with a brief biography and any
audio-visual requirements, to Tracey Hill (t.hill@bathspa.ac.uk), Ian Gadd
(i.gadd@bathspa.ac.uk) and Peter C. Herman (herman2@mail.sdsu.edu) by April
21st. Please note that in order to present a paper at the RSA Convention,
you must be a member of the RSA at the time of the convention.

Welcome!

Department News

This is a weblog run by the Special Collections at University of Houston Libraries. Contributions will be primarily from Special Collections librarians and staff, but all are welcome to comment.  My name is Amelia Abreu and I am an Archivist and History Librarian in Special Collections.

Our goal is to share news from our department as well as resources that may be of interest to our researchers and colleagues. If you have any questions, feel free to comment.