[Apologies for cross-posting]

Call For Papers: Making the Old New Again: Digital Medievalism in an Ever-Changing World

The Oxford Text Archive, University of Oxford, invites abstracts for 20 minute papers to be delivered in the above sponsored session at the 40th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University (May 5-8, 2005).

Session Abstract: This session aims to bring together medievalists working with digital projects to discuss their experiences with the every-changing and evolving nature of these resources. As increasingly more electronic research tools are created and computing technology changes, making the old resources accessible in new contexts is often extremely challenging. What do you do when your campus upgrades to a new operating system and your 'Teach Yourself Old English' software no longer functions? How do you convert electronic manuscript editions from a couple decades ago into a format so they will work with new software? Other related issues which could be included in the session include: the repurposing of older material to enable comparability in new resources, the transformation of legacy data into standards-compliant formats, the introduction of out-dated material into new online publishing frameworks, and the special challenges faced by medieval resource creation. It is hoped that this session will attract those with both negative and positive experience of data migration and resource creation, and allow them to share their experience to help medievalists work towards common goals of preservation of the digital medieval resources we already have and best practice in future resource creation.

Please send abstracts (max. 500 words) for proposed papers with an even shorter summary c.v. to: James.Cummings@oucs.ox.ac.uk before 1 September 2004. Make sure to include complete contact information and AV requirements, and note that accepted participants must commit themselves to attend.

For more information concerning this conference please see: http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/

Please feel free to circulate this call for papers to anyone you think might be interested.

-James

--- Dr James Cummings, Oxford Text Archive, University of Oxford James dot Cummings at ota dot ahds dot ac dot uk