The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP) and the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) are co-sponsoring two roundtables at the upcoming American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) conference in Cleveland, 4-6 April 2013: “ECCO, EEBO, and Burney as Tools for Bibliography and Book History I and II.
The idea for these sessions originated in earlier EMOB posts, especially Anna’s posting EEBO Interactions and Bibliography: Linking the Past to the Present” and the twenty-two comments her remarks prompted. The full Call for this roundtable can be viewed here. This space offers an opportunity to preview these two sessions and exchange ideas in advance of the sessions. The results of the Digital Humanities Caucus Technology Survey reports that members have found ASECS sessions devoted to these tools particularly useful, so we are hoping that many will not only attend these sessions but will also participate. For those who cannot attend, this forum will enable you to participate virtually, and a follow-up post summarizing the roundtables will enable you to obtain the highlights of the exchange.
The lineup for the two roundtables is as follows:
“EEBO, ECCO, and Burney as Tools for Bibliography and Book History” (SHARP BSA Roundtable) I
Chair: Eleanor F. SHEVLIN (West Chester University)
- 1. Anna BATTIGELLI (SUNY Plattsburgh)
- 2. Kevin Joel BERLAND (Pennsylvania State University)
- 3. Laura RUNGE (University of South Florida)
- 4. Stephen KARIAN (University of Missouri)
“EEBO, ECCO, and Burney as Tools for Bibliography and Book History” (SHARP BSA Roundtable) II
Chair: Anna BATTIGELLI (SUNY Plattsburgh)
- 1. Jacob HEIL (Texas A&M University)
- 2. Eleanor F. SHEVLIN (West Chester University)
- 3. Norbert SCHÜRER (California State University, Long Beach)
- 4. Rivka SWENSON (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Participants will be discussing a wide array of uses for these tools in pursing bibliographical issues and book-history matters. The discussions will address the ways these databases can be employed both for advanced research and for pedagogical purposes.
We invite the participants to provide the general focus of their remarks and attendees to suggest areas that they hope will be addressed.
Early Modern Online Bibliography 
March 22, 2013 at 10:49 pm |
Thanks, Eleanor, for calling attention to these two sessions. I’m looking forward to hearing what participants (both panelists and attendees) have to say on this topic. There is a lot to discuss!
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March 23, 2013 at 9:08 am |
I will be speaking briefly about using ECCO and Burney in tandem. I will also address the ways in which Burney can serve book history projects beyond book advertisements.
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March 24, 2013 at 5:43 pm |
Eleanor, I look forward to learning more about using Burney and ECCO in tandem. SUNY will be experimenting with ECCO and Burney in the fall, if everything goes as planned. I’m always interested in these tools’ application for research, but given Gale’s student initiative, I am also interested in knowing how best to introduce these tools to students in my Gothic Novels course.
For my presentation (in Part II), I will use the decommissioning of EEBO Interactions to explore some professional issues pertaining to the digital world:
1) How are we as literary scholars to respond to the new digital world so as to allow for promising change while protecting the bibliographical advances of the twentieth century?
2) Is it time for humanities scholars to consider collaborations with commercial ventures such as ProQuest and Gale Cengage in the way that has become standard for the sciences?
3) Can professional organizations such as ASECS, SHARP, and MLA help us attend to the new responsibilities we carry both as teachers and scholars?
4) How can we collaborate with our librarians to prepare our schools for a 21st-century world without throwing out the achievements (or books) of the past?
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March 24, 2013 at 9:15 pm |
A rich array of related topics, Anna, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
I still fee that our professional organizations–especially MLA and ASECS because of their US focus–should help address the issue of access and work to solve the inequities that persist.
To assist in professional training and foster expertise, SHARP is providing scholarships to attend UVA’s Rare Book School and California’s Rare Book School as well as the Digital Humanities Institute at the University of Victoria. These initiatives address just one aspect of your third question.
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April 7, 2013 at 11:47 pm |
Many thanks to the fascinating, thoughtful presentations offered by all the roundtable participants at these two sessions. Thanks as well to the audiences who responded and helped to create a substantive conversation about the diverse issues involved.
We’ll have a post up in a week or so offering a summary of the two roundtables, and we hope to continue the conversation there.
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April 8, 2013 at 10:51 pm |
I learned a lot from both the presentations and the discussion. Many thanks, Eleanor, for a great two-part session! I hope discussion will continue here.
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