Reassembling the Republic of Letters

COST-Action IS1310 ‘Reassembling the Republic of Letters’
Training School in Tallinn, Estonia, 13–16 March 2018
‘EMLO on the road’

The third Training School of the Action will take place in March 2018 in Tallinn, Estonia.

Date
Tuesday, 13th – Friday, 16th March 2018

Purpose
The purpose of the Training School is to learn how to prepare metadata for publication in a union catalogue of early modern correspondence.

Attendees
2 trainers and 12 trainees

Generously funded by COST Action IS 1310, the Under and Tuglas Literature Centre of the Estonian Academy of Sciences is hosting the third ‘Reassembling the Republic of Letters’ Digital Humanities Training School, in Tallinn.

Aims
The aim of the Training School is to teach participants to collate, standardize, and prepare for publication early modern correspondence metadata in a format that is compatible with a union catalogue in addition to meeting the needs and requirements of the contributing scholar’s own work and focus of research.

Format
The training sessions will be conducted by Miranda Lewis (Editor) and Charlotte Marique (Editorial Assistant) of the online database Early Modern Letters Online [EMLO], which is maintained by the Cultures of Knowledge project at the University of Oxford. Using tools developed specifically for metadata preparation, and in combination with standards that enable interoperability, participants will learn how to collate and structure epistolary metadata for publication in a union catalogue. Attendees will be shown how to take advantage of pre-existing, standardized early modern person and place metadata, together with relevant associated authority file references and links. The sessions will be tailored to help clarify specific issues and problems that arise in the course of work with epistolary metadata assembled from a wide range of sources and in pre-existing formats.

All participants are encouraged to bring their own metadata (whether pre-structured, partially structured, or unstructured), but in special cases sample metadata can be supplied for training purposes. Sessions will be conducted in English, and supporting documents and guides in English and  German will be available. Each participant will be required to bring a laptop for use during the sessions that will enable work with online tools and is capable of running Excel. Please note that tablets will not be suitable. Although a basic knowledge of Excel will be assumed, full training in all relevant spreadsheet work will be provided.

• Contact person for queries on the content of the Training School:
  Miranda Lewis (Training School Trainer), Oxford University: miranda.lewis@history.ox.ac.uk
• Contact person for financial questions/reimbursements:
  Arno Bosse (Manager), Oxford University: cost@history.ox.ac.uk
• Contact person in Tallinn for questions about local details:
  Kristi Viiding (Training School Coordinator), Estonian Academy of Sciences: kristi.viiding@gmail.com