EEBO-TCP Conference: Digital Methods and Methodologies

As some of my readers may know, last week I attended the 2013 EEBO-TCP conference at Lincoln College, Oxford. It was the first academic conference that I had attended (not counting the ones that I have worked at!), and it really was a fantastic experience. Everybody was so welcoming, and I learnt an awful lot! 

Apart from learning an awful lot about digital humanities that, as the old adage goes, I didn't know I didn't know, I also picked up a wealth of useful information that I will be able to use in the coming years. There was news of new and exciting databases that are up and running (what early-modern undergraduate knew that there was a vast electronic world outside EEBO?!), projects that will be completed in the next couple of years, and lots of incredible work that would not have even begun without the use of electronic databases. 

Not only that, but the two keynote talks from Dr Jane Winters and Professor Ian Gadd were incredibly interesting. It is thanks to Jane that I am about to start my MA armed with an enormous list of little-known early-modern databases that she has been involved in creating (I will cover some of these in another, separate post soon). And it is thanks to Ian that I will never look at the dog-eared corner of a book in the same way again. In his talk, he pointed out that, in the seventeenth century and earlier, dog-earing the corner of a text was considered the mark of a devout reader: fold over the page that interested you, and you were cementing a very personal and tactile relationship with your book that was unique to you. However, as is ever the case, the significance of this act morphed over the centuries. By the nineteenth century (and up to the present day - just look at the definition of dog-ear in the OED), dog-earing had become the hallmark of a clumsy and careless reader who handled their books too roughly. Really fascinating stuff.

If my little snippets of news from the conference have whet your appetite for all things digital, I would encourage you to go and have a look at the Storify feed from the conference to catch up on all the wonderful goings-on that I haven't covered! It can be found here:

http://storify.com/pipwillcox/early-modern-texts-digital-methods-and-methodologi?utm_content=storify-pingback&utm_source=t.co&utm_campaign=&awesm=sfy.co_fReo&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter

Below I have just shared a few of my favourite tweets from the conference that were really valuable:

 © Jenna Townend 2013