presentation at 5th International Conference on e-Social Science, 25 June 2009, Cologne. Organisers: NCESS

1. Uncovering Collaboratories
in Social and Economic History
Stefan Dormans
5th International Conference on e-Social Science
25 June 2009, Cologne

2. atural Sciences vs. SS&H
ore collaboratories
onger tradition
ore funding and support

3. ocial and technological
aspects of collaboratory
projects in social and
economic history

4. Collaboratories in Social and Economic History
Groups of experts
who aggregate and
co-create datasets
for international
historical research

5. Global Collaboratory on Labour Relations: 1500-2000
wikimedia.org

6. Historical data
Unless the evidence is available in its original
form or in careful extracts transcribed by
previous scholars, historians will not have the
information they need to reinterpret the events
they have not researched personally.”
Roth et al., 2008: 82)

7. Meta knowledge
• Publications
• Metadata
• Annotation
• Methodological papers
o Guesstimates

8. Moments of engagement
• Workshops
• Mailing lists and e-mail
• Collaborative software
o Little interaction outside workshops

9. Making the implicit explicit
• Solitary work
• Time investment
• Uncover the implicit research process
• Open for scrutiny and contestation

10. Stefan Dormans
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences (VKS)
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)
stefan.dormans@vks.knaw.nl