Sponsored by Sawyer Seminar (Mellon Foundation)
Co-sponsored Catapult Center for Digital Humanities & HPSC

Lecture featuring Dr. Urs Schoepflin of Max Planck Gesellschaft fuer Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin). This event is free and open to the public, no registration required.

Abstract: Since the foundation of the Max Planck Institute of the History of Science in 1994, it is our primary concern to make source materials available in digital form together with developing cutting edge tools and instruments to adequately support the scholarly work. ECHO - Cultural Heritage Online as an open access repository and research environment is the most prominent outcome of this endeavor. Based on our experience, basic issues of motivation, collection building strategies, specific tool development, Open Access as primary prerequisite (Berlin Declaration), research collaboration and trans-disciplinarity will be raised. Reflecting on changing notions of "the document" and on information economy, novel ways of disseminating research results will be presented (e.g. by way of Virtual Spaces; with Edition Open Access). Finally, problems of organizing quality control, of long-term sustainability, and of gaining recognition in evaluation procedures will be discussed.