Monday, July 15, 2019

Davy Notebooks Project

Join in the Davy Notebooks Project and help transcribe these important sources for anyone interested in science and literature.

About the project:

Aims

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was perhaps the most famous chemist of the nineteenth century. This project aims to transcribe five of Davy’s early notebooks, which show his experiments in both chemistry and poetry.

The notebooks selected for this pilot run reveal how Davy’s mind worked and how his thinking developed. Containing details of his scientific experiments, poetry, geological observations, travel accounts, and personal philosophy, Davy's notebooks present us with a wide range of fascinating insights. Many of the pages of these notebooks have never been transcribed before. By transcribing these notebooks, we will find out more about the young Davy, his life, and the cultures and networks of which he was part.

The transcriptions produced by Zooniverse participants, and images of the manuscript pages, will later be published online on a custom-built, open access website, providing unprecedented access to these important historical documents. All individual participants will be given the option to be listed in the Acknowledgements section of the Davy Notebooks Project website. This is entirely optional, and at the sole discretion of each individual participant.
We hope that transcribers will also take part in the next run of our FutureLearn Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) ‘Humphry Davy: Laughing Gas, Literature, and the Lamp’. You will be able to sign up to this course at the end of July and the four-week course will begin on 28 October 2019.

Davy’s Notebooks in the RI

The RI holds an important collection of seventy-one unpublished notebooks written by Davy. Davy held several positions at the RI (Director of the Laboratory, 1801-25; Professor of Chemistry, 1802-12; Honorary Professor, 1813-23) and did his most important research there. The current run of the Davy Notebooks Project is intended as a pilot: we aim to transcribe five notebooks between June-September 2019. If successful, the project will later be expanded, and further notebooks will be transcribed.

No comments: