Yale University Library News

April 2012 Archives

April 5, 2012

Digital Laboratories and Collaboratories in the Humanities (SCOPA Forum)

Digital Laboratories
and Collaboratories
in the Humanities

Monday, April 16, 2:00 pm
Location: SML International Room

In this forum Dean Irvine, Yale University’s Bicentennial Canadian Studies Visiting Professor, will discuss digital laboratories and collaboratories in the humanities. Bruno Latour and Steve Woogar’s landmark 1979 study Laboratory Life records their ethnography of a neuroendocrinology lab in which they document the observations of a fictional character who posits, after a period of initial observation, that the laboratory began to take on the appearance of a "system of literary inscription.” This hypothesis did not sit well with the laboratory’s researchers; in fact, they hotly resented their representation as part of some "literary activity.” The corollary of Latour and Woogar’s hypothesis is obvious enough: if the lab is a literary institution, then the institutional formation of the lab is not the exclusive property of the sciences. Or, more troubling, the sciences are themselves a literary institution. What if we were to reverse their hypothesis and examine the system of literary inscription in the humanities as one of laboratory experiments? This talk will address that same vexed hypothesis by way of sampling from the emergent field of the digital humanities. In particular, it will speak to the digital initiatives of the Editing Modernism in Canada project and its development of research infrastructure in partnership with a network of laboratories and collaboratories in the humanities. And, finally, it will include demos of some of the tools currently under development by these partners.

Dean Irvine is Director of the Editing Modernism in Canada project and Associate Professor in the Department of English at Dalhousie University. He is the author of Editing Modernity: Women and Little-Magazine Cultures in Canada (2008), and editor of The Canadian Modernists Meet (2005), Heresies: The Complete Poems of Anne Wilkinson (2003), and Archive for Our Times: Previously Uncollected and Unpublished Poems of Dorothy Livesay (1998). His latest book, Variant Readings: Editing Canadian Literatures, is forthcoming from McGill-Queen's University Press.

More information on SCOPA

Upcoming . . .

Mentoring at Yale University Library
Tuesday, April 17, 3:00 pm
SML International Room

Alexandre Asanovic on the Bibliothèque Universitaire des Langues et Civilisations Wednesday, April 25, 2:00 pm SML International Room

Posted by Yale University Library on April 5, 2012 9:07 AM

Cassandra Calling: Conservation pasts, present and futures

Cassandra Calling:
Conservation pasts,
present and futures

by Mary M. Brooks, textile conservator, consultant and lecturer

Thursday, April 19, 3:30 pm

Sterling Memorial Library lecture hall

Mary M. Brooks, PhD, FIIC, ACR, is a private conservator and consultant on the conservation of textiles. She has worked in museums in the United States, Europe and England. Her exhibition, Stop the Rot, at York Castle Museum aimed to raise public awareness of heritage conservation. Besides her consulting and conservation work she teaches conservation and museology in universities in the United Kingdom and abroad. Mary has a particular interest in the contribution that object-based research and conservation approaches can make to the wider interpretation and presentation of cultural artifacts. Her talk will explore the changing relationships between conservators, conservation and the public and scholars in our post-modern digital world of replicas and multiples.

There will be an informal reception following the talk.

Posted by Yale University Library on April 5, 2012 9:08 AM

April 18, 2012

Study Break at CSSSI 4/23 8:30pm for all Yale students

NEED A STUDY BREAK?

All Yale students are welcome to join us for food and fun at The Center for Science & Social Science Information (CSSSI) at 219 Prospect Street on Monday, April 23rd from 8:30pm - 10:30pm

Enjoy free pizza, snacks, and drinks and play video games on our giant media screens!

Questions? Call 203-432-3300. See you there!

Posted by Amanda Patrick on April 18, 2012 4:07 PM

April 24, 2012

National Trust Libraries with Mark Purcell


Thursday, May 3, 5:00 pm
Location: SML International Room

The libraries of the British National Trust (in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland) together form one of the greatest repositories of early printed books in Europe, and they are almost certainly the largest collection of historic libraries in the hands of a single institution anywhere in the world. For decades these libraries were almost entirely invisible and inaccessible, but over the last ten years the Trust has been engaged in a huge program to get their catalogues online, to open up the collection for research, and to investigate the cultural significance of books which have often remained for hundreds of years in the places where they were once collected and read. This illustrated presentation will give an overview of the libraries—many but not all in country houses, a summary of current projects, and some thoughts on the research value of 300,000 books divided among more than 150 separate locations.

Mark Purcell has been Libraries Curator to the National Trust since 1999. He originally read History at Oriel College, Oxford, trained at University College, London, and has published extensively on the history of books and libraries in early modern Britain and Ireland.

About SCOPA
Yale University Library’s Standing Committee on Professional Awareness, SCOPA, strives to encourage professional growth and the development of librarianship as a dynamic profession. SCOPA organizes a regular series of forums devoted to a wide range of topics concerning initiatives in Yale libraries and academic libraries in general. SCOPA welcomes suggestions concerning possible future forums.

More information on SCOPA

Posted by Yale University Library on April 24, 2012 12:39 PM

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