How do historians of science use digital media and technology in their research? How can libraries and other cultural heritage institutions build digital collections to support new research methodologies? Stephen Robertson has argued that “Part of the explanation for why more historians have not undertaken text mining and topic modeling projects lies in the limited availability of machine readable texts: historians more often rely on unpublished sources than literary scholars, and on handwritten records that it is not yet possible to effectively use OCR to transform into machine readable text.”

I propose a talk session that gathers scholars and library professionals in the history of science to reflect on diverse digital research methodologies (text mining, mapping, topic modeling, etc.) and online historical texts and data sets. How could metadata be improved and file types presented differently so that these digital objects can work more readily with the tools researchers are using? What resources do you wish were available online? A collaborative conversation about the challenges digital historians face when using existing online resources can help improve online collections for the future.

• ERICK PEIRSON — MAKE session — Establish HSS Interest Group for Digital History of Science

I propose a MAKE session to start establishing a special interest group for Digital History of Science. A special interest group could facilitate networking and communication among scholars that use or are interested in digital methods, organize sessions at future HSS meetings, and help disseminate the results of digital scholarship in the history of science. We could use this session to draft a statement of purpose and come up with objectives and action-items for creating the group. Who’s game?

• STEPHEN WELDON — TALK session — Building the IsisCB Platform

I propose a session explaining the thrust behind the IsisCB Platform being developed at the University of Oklahoma in collaboration with the University of Melbourne and Indiana University. After six months we have digitized 5000 pages of printed bibliographic matter and are parsing the pages into citations and fields, and we have converted 300,000 existing bibliographic and authority records to Library of Congress standards for ease of sharing. I will demonstrate the two data viewers under development to search and view the data.

• TINA GIANQUITTO — LIGHTNING TALK — Mapping scientific correspondence networks of 19th-century women botanists

I would like to propose a Lightning Session on a digital project I am just beginning, which will map the scientific correspondence networks of 19th century women botanists, as well as their botanical excursions and collected (herbarium) specimens. I would especially like to get some advice on possible platforms (VisualEyes? DH Press?). I am a total novice in the DH world!

I propose a session explaining the thrust behind the IsisCB Platform being developed at the University of Oklahoma in collaboration with the University of Melbourne and Indiana University. After six months we have digitized 5000 pages of printed bibliographic matter and are parsing the pages into citations and fields, and we have converted 300,000 existing bibliographic and authority records to Library of Congress standards for ease of sharing. I will demonstrate the two data viewers under development to search and view the data.

I propose a Make session to start establishing a special interest group for Digital History of Science. A special interest group could facilitate networking and communication among scholars that use or are interested in digital methods, organize sessions at future HSS meetings, and help disseminate the results of digital scholarship in the history of science.

We could use this session to draft a statement of purpose and come up with objectives and action-items for creating the group.

Who’s game?