On-line seminar
29 March 2022
The next on-line seminar of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, which will be a joint event with the Science and Technology Archive Group (STAG), will be given by Dr Michelle DiMeo (Science History Institute, Philadelphia) who will present ‘Collecting and Describing Chemical Archives in 2022: Opportunities and Challenges.’
This will be live on Zoom on Tuesday 29 March 2022 beginning at 5.00pm BST (6.00pm CEST, 12 noon EDT, 9.00am PDT). The format will be a talk of 20-30 minutes, followed by a moderated discussion of half an hour. Anyone, member of SHAC or STAG or not, may register to attend the seminar by e-mailing [email protected]; a Zoom link to the seminar will be sent the day before. (If having registered you do not receive a link please check your junk folder).
Alternatively, the seminar can also be accessed live on YouTube at https://youtu.be/pn_daBFdEEU.
The past two decades have solidified a wide-spread professional commitment towards diversifying the historical record and increasing the discoverability of cultural assets. It is well known and accepted that intellectual and social value judgments imbue our curatorial work: what we choose to preserve and how we describe it shapes any future narrative that can be told. Historians of science remain committed toward revealing the stories of hidden and unnamed actors, whether they are early modern women alchemists or teams of twentieth-century laboratory assistants. But what does this mean for the archivist who is tasked with collecting and describing important historical artifacts, often with limited storage space and financial resources? What policies, workflows, or priorities need to change in the archives in order to accommodate new research trends? Drawing on various examples from her career in Philadelphia-area special collections libraries, Michelle DiMeo explores some opportunities and challenges related to collecting and describing the history of chemistry in the 2020s.
Most previous on-line seminars can be found on the SHAC YouTube Channel: