Event 1 – Davy Notebooks Project Online Transcribe-a-thon (4 August 2021, on Zoom)
Our first event – our first ever online transcribe-a-thon – took place on Wednesday 4 August 2021, 3-5pm (UK time) (9-11am CT, 10am-12pm ET).
We had 36 participants from all over the world, and it was a real privilege to finally ‘meet’ and engage with some of our transcribers. The two hours really flew by!
The format of the event was:
| Welcome and overview of the event | 5 minutes |
| Q&A between Sharon Ruston and Alexis Wolf | 10 minutes |
| Transcription task 1 (notebook 21B) | 30 minutes |
| Social break (small breakout room discussions of the previous task) | 15 minutes |
| Screen break (to refresh our eyes!) | 15 minutes |
| Transcription task 2 (notebook 22A) | 30 minutes |
| Concluding whole-group discussion | 15 minutes |
During the one hour we spent transcribing (which, of course, included the time necessary to ‘get up to speed’ with the task instructions), we managed to:
- Transcribe 15% of notebook 21B
- Transcribe 4% of the (longer) notebook 22A
Notebook 21B
Notebook 22A
By 5pm UK time, when the transcribe-a-thon ended, we had gathered 329 classifications on Zooniverse for 4 August 2021. With the exception of the days surrounding the project launch, this is the highest number of classifications we’ve ever had on a single day.
We also had lots of stimulating discussion over the course of the event, taking in: the difficulties inherent in transcribing Davy’s hand, and especially the mathematical notation in notebook 21B; Davy’s relationship with his brother, John Davy; Davy’s (sometimes idiosyncratic) use of punctuation; differences between nineteenth-century and present-day handwriting and typography; Davy’s habit of sketching in his notebooks; and more.
Many thanks again to our wonderful transcribers! We really enjoyed the event, and hope that you did too. We’ve gathered lots of positive feedback so far.
Summary by Andrew Lacey
Event 2 – Davy Notebooks Project Online Volunteers’ Meeting (25 February 2022, on Zoom)
RI MS HD/07, p. 000_6, detail (click to enlarge)
Michael Faraday’s note, dated 4 December 1829, in Royal Institution laboratory notebook 07, one of the transcribed pages discussed by Sharon in her talk
On Friday 25 February, we held our first volunteer meet-up event, which was online.
8 volunteers participated in the one-hour event, and four members of the Davy Notebooks Project team: Professors Sharon Ruston and Frank James, and Dr Andrew Lacey and Dr Ellie Bird.
The main purpose of the event was to meet with volunteers and hear their views and experiences of transcribing on the Davy Notebooks Project. There was also a focus on hearing from the project team about the new and exciting research that is being made possible by their impressive work transcribing Davy’s 70-strong notebook collection.
We started the session with short introductions, where we got to hear from volunteers about their backgrounds and interests in participating in the project. It was wonderful and eye-opening to learn more about our volunteers. There was an informal period of questions, during which the project team asked questions, and volunteers also asked questions of each other.
Next, Professor Sharon Ruston gave a 10-minute presentation exploring some of the fantastic research findings that are coming out of the work by volunteers transcribing Davy’s notebooks, followed by a short Q&A. We heard how transcription work and research done by Zooniverse volunteers and shared on Talk (the internal discussion platform on Zooniverse) is helping to expand our understanding of how Davy used his notebooks, which in the case of the Royal Institution laboratory notebooks show the collaborative nature of much of his chemical research, and his attitudes towards the accuracy of scientific description in poetry.
From Dr Andrew Lacey, during a quick update on the progress of the project so far, we learned that the project is now 42% complete – a huge achievement – and heard more about the peaks we’ve seen on various days.
From feedback that we’ve had from volunteers at the event and afterwards, we realise that events like this can help volunteers to feel valued and to see the difference that their contributions are making. Volunteers appreciated the chance to meet with, and chat to, one another. It was clear that they see finding out about the research that is coming out of the project as important – all things that we can build on going forward, as we hope, after the success of this event, to run future meet-up events for our brilliant volunteers!
Thanks to everyone who participated!
Summary by Ellie Bird
Event 3 – Davy Notebooks Project In-person Transcribe-a-thon (14 May 2022, University College London)
Following on from a successful in-person transcribe-a-thon held at the British Society for Literature and Science annual conference on Saturday 9 April, on Saturday 14 May we held another in-person transcribe-a-thon event at University College London. The event ran from 11am to 3pm, and we had 10 participants.
The format of the event was:
| Welcome and introduction to Davy | Sharon Ruston |
| Davy and electrochemistry | Frank James |
| Transcription task 1 (notebook 03A1) | |
| The materiality of Davy’s notebooks | Andrew Lacey |
| Lunch | |
| Transcription task 2 (notebook 03A1) | |
| Working with ALICE and Talk | Eleanor Bird |
We ended with a group Q&A discussion. Over the course of the event, we managed to transcribe over 65% of notebook 03A1 – a fantastic achievement! On the day of the transcribe-a-thon, we gathered 178 classifications. As usual, we had some stimulating discussion throughout the event – mainly on the difficulties of deciphering Davy’s hand! Two of our participants, Aalia Ahmed and Lucia Scigliano, have written a great guest blog post on how they found the day – many thanks to Aalia and Lucia for sharing their experiences.
Summary by Andrew Lacey
Event 4 – Davy Notebooks Project ‘Using the Zooniverse Project Builder’ workshop (20 May 2022, Lancaster University)
We were delighted to welcome Dr Samantha Blickhan, Zooniverse Co-Director and Humanities Lead, to Lancaster. Samantha travelled from Chicago, where she’s based at the Adler Planetarium, for our workshop. We had 17 participants (15 in person, and 2 online) in this hybrid event, which took place in the Digital Scholarship Lab in the University Library.
The format of the event was:
| Introduction, and overview of the Project Builder | Samantha Blickhan |
| Working with the Project Builder: Davy Notebooks Project case study | Andrew Lacey |
| Lunch | |
| Working with ALICE and Talk: Davy Notebooks Project case study | Eleanor Bird |
| Q&A session | Whole team, led by Samantha Blickhan |
We welcomed our participants with tea and coffee, and also had an afternoon tea and coffee break before the Q&A session (pictured below).
Our participants learned more about Zooniverse, the practicalities of working with the Project Builder in managing a transcription project, and the various ways in which we work with the transcriptions submitted and engage with our volunteers online. The programme for the day is here.
Summary by Andrew Lacey. With thanks to Clare Egan for providing the photo.
Event 5 – Davy Notebooks Project Online Volunteers’ Meeting (27 June 2022, on Teams)
RI MS HD/15/F, p. 133, rotated (click to enlarge)
Davy’s statement of thanks for the honour done in electing him president, possibly a draft letter or speech written upon him taking up the position of President of the Royal Society in 1820
On Monday 27 June, we held our second volunteer meet-up event, which was online.
Fourteen volunteers participated in the one-hour event and four members of the Davy Notebooks Project team: Professor Frank James, Dr Samantha Blickhan, Dr Andrew Lacey, and Dr Ellie Bird.
The main purpose of the event was to say thank you to our wonderful volunteers and celebrate what has been achieved so far; we are already 60% through transcribing Davy’s entire notebook collection. The event had the theme ‘A Time to Say Thanks’, which was the theme this year for Volunteers’ Week in the UK, also held in June (1-7).
We started the session with short introductions, where we got to hear from volunteers about their backgrounds and interests in participating in the project. It was wonderful and eye-opening to learn more about our volunteers. We were joined by some volunteers who have been transcribing since our pilot project, as well as new transcribers, who found out about the project through a piece in the recent U3A publication ‘Third Age Matters’. It was wonderful to learn more about our volunteers, their work on other transcription projects, and interest in transcribing Davy’s notebooks.
Next, Sam Blickhan, a Co-Investigator on the Davy Notebooks Project and Humanities Lead for Zooniverse and Co-Director of the Zooniverse team at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, popped in to say hello and thank you from Zooniverse for everybody’s efforts on the project to date and explained how the feedback from volunteers also helps to develop and improve aspects of how projects run on Zooniverse. Andrew Lacey extended his thanks on behalf of the other members of the Davy Notebooks Project team, and gave a brief update on progress.
Then we split into break-out rooms for a Davy-themed quiz, with a few small book-related prizes to give away! This was a nice chance to get to know each other in smaller groups.
Following this, there was a short talk by Frank James on ‘Young Humphry Davy’, focusing on Davy’s early days in Cornwall and (from 1798) Bristol, highlighting some of his key early relationships. Frank looked at how Davy, coming from a provincial part of the country and the son of a yeoman farmer, rose to become the most important chemist in early nineteenth-century Britain.
From feedback that we’ve had from volunteers at the event and afterwards, we know that learning about research coming out of the project is a really important element of events that we run and that volunteers really enjoy having the chance to meet and connect with each other and the research team.
Thanks to everyone who participated!
Summary by Ellie Bird
Event 6 – Davy Notebooks Project Hybrid Transcribe-a-thon (11 February 2023, at the Morrab Library, Penzance, and on Zoom)
Our first hybrid transcribe-a-thon took place on Saturday 11 February 2023, 1-4pm (UK time), at the Morrab Library, Penzance, and on Zoom.
We had 10 participants (4 in person and 6 online), and managed to transcribe just over a quarter of notebook GS-6-1.
The format of the event was:
| Welcome and overview of the event | 15 minutes |
| Transcription task 1 | 60 minutes |
| Frank James’s talk: ‘Davy and Cornwall’ | 25 minutes |
| Break for refreshments | 15 minutes |
| Transcription task 2 | 50 minutes |
| Feedback | 10 minutes |
Image shared by @morrablibrary
Many thanks again to our wonderful transcribers! We really enjoyed the event, and hope that you did too.
Event 7 – Davy Notebooks Project Online Volunteers’ Meeting (24 July 2023, on Teams)
On Monday 24 July 2023, members of the Davy Notebooks Project team met with some of our wonderful Zooniverse volunteer transcribers to ask them about their experiences of working on the project. The event was organised for our forthcoming Notes and Records of the Royal Society Special Issue, which will focus on findings from the project. Sharon welcomed everyone and gave her sincere thanks to all the volunteers for their efforts on the project. It was a great opportunity for members of the Davy Notebooks Project team to ask the volunteers questions and for volunteers to get a chance to share their experiences and ask questions of the team and each other.
Five of our volunteers – Helen, Carrie, John, David, and Carlene – presented on their favourite pages and discoveries from Davy’s notebooks so far. From Helen, we had a sketch Davy had made of Carrick-a-Rede in County Antrim, with its tiny rope bridge (which Helen had helped us to identify the location of). Carrie and John spoke about two poems written by Anna Beddoes in Davy’s notebooks and reflected on Anna and Davy’s relationship. David spoke about the way Davy observed the world around him as a chemist and the materiality of the notebook pages – with a page showing a possible drop of rain. Carlene gave a fantastic close reading of a little-discussed Davy poem. It was a fascinating and humbling experience to learn about the wide-ranging material that has inspired our volunteers and to hear their brilliant insights.
Helen’s page
Carrie’s page
One of John’s pages
David’s page
Carlene’s page
To close, Andrew gave everyone the first public look at our digital edition of Davy’s notebooks on the Lancaster Digital Collections platform, which was a wonderful way to round off the session before saying our goodbyes.
With special thanks to our Zooniverse volunteer transcribers who attended this event:
Helen, Carrie, John, David, Carlene, Angela, Chloe
You can watch the full recording here.
Summary by Ellie Bird
Event 8 – Davy Notebooks Project ‘Science and/or Poetry: Interdisciplinarity in Notebooks’ conference (26-27 July 2023, at Lancaster Castle and Lancaster University)
In late July, more than two dozen international scholars of the arts and sciences came together for ‘Science and/or Poetry: Interdisciplinarity in Notebooks’, a conference organised by the Davy Notebooks Project team and held in Lancaster.
The conference theme was inspired by our efforts to digitise and interpret Humphry Davy’s notebooks, a goal which we, along with our volunteers, have been working towards since the project’s beginning. Taking what we’ve learned from Davy’s notebooks as a starting point, we broadened the scope of our call for papers to examine how literature and science have interacted within the pages of notebooks across difference disciplines and historical periods. We were delighted by the diversity of approach and areas of study in the abstracts we received, a range that was reflected in the fascinating papers we heard over the course of our two-day meeting.
The first day of our conference took place at beautiful Lancaster Castle. We began with an excellent morning discussion centring on interdisciplinarity, poetry, and science in notebooks. The first panel examined Coleridge’s complex notebooks, considering the power of touch and materiality, dream records, incomplete readings, and more. Our second group of speakers explored poetics, scientific experimentation, demonstration, and the evolution of interdisciplinarity in notebooks of Davy, Berzelius, Coleridge, and Mach. The third panel covered fascinating projects focusing on collaboration and outreach in the arts and sciences, including contributions from The Lyell Project and The Science Museum, as well as a member of own project team speaking on the Davy Notebooks Project Reading Group.
To end the first day, we listened to a brilliant keynote by Greg Tate on Mathilde Blind’s 1890s notebook, which included consideration of Victorian ideas of waste and raised thought-provoking questions about the use and meaning of notebooks. This spurred interesting conversations that we carried over to our conference dinner on campus.
The second day of the conference was held in the Digital Scholarship Lab in the Library, which is linked with Lancaster Digital Collections, one of our project partners and the future host of the digital editions that will result from our project. The first group of panel speakers considered the form of institutional collections, methods of learning and training in notebooks, and the relationship between biography and the form of author notebooks, with a focus on Sloane’s herbarias, eighteenth-century Scottish school notebooks, and Davy’s early life. Our second panel explored a huge range of notebook practices from the eighteenth century to the Victorian period through the twentieth century, with excellent discussions of artistic skill, the systemisation of lifelong writing, and fragmentary posthumous archives in the notebooks of Gerald Manley Hopkins, Thomas Gray, and Sara Teasdale.
Before lunch, members of the Davy Notebooks Project Team came together to present a Roundtable on the forthcoming Notes and Records of the Royal Society Special Issue, which will focus on findings from the project. Conference delegates as well as virtual participants engaged in discussion about the papers within the special issue, offering useful ideas to the team. The last panel looked at collaborative or shared notebooks in both the Romantic and Victorian periods, which led to interesting discussions on interventions, authorship, and legacy in the shared notebooks of Mary Coleridge, Edward Ellerker Williams, and Edward John Trelawny. Our final part of the conference was a wonderful and wide-ranging lecture from our second keynote, Dahlia Porter, speaking on experimental notebooks and the embodied labour underpinning scientific and procedural processes in notebooks, by delving into the complex notebooks of the Wedgwood Collection. Dahlia’s paper resulted in a lively Q&A discussion, which capped a brilliant day of exchanging ideas.
Over the course of the conference, several intersecting themes emerged. These included considering how interdisciplinarity might spur creativity in both the arts and sciences. We collectively reflected on the intimacy of working with notebooks as well as the various layers of mediation and touch that manuscripts can transmit over time and to different individuals, whether researchers, or archivists, or members of the public. We discussed the value of notebooks as texts in themselves, and whether they can and should be read on their own merits rather than mining them as source documents for later publications or scientific discoveries. We talked about the powerful influence held by institutions over the interpretation of manuscripts, which they are often the first to categorise, actions which have a lasting impact on how they are encountered by future readers in terms of disciplinarity. Finally, we considered the importance of literary and scientific collaboration in notebooks as well as the silent labour of workers that may underpin the writing or experiments captured within their pages.
We are grateful to all of our participants for joining us in Lancaster and sharing their insightful papers. The ideas we took away from the event will surely resonate through our future work on the Davy Notebooks Project and beyond.
Summary by Alexis Wolf
Conference Papers, Talks, Seminars, and Related Activities
British Association for Romantic Studies International Digital Conference 2021: Romantic Disconnections/Reconnections (Thursday 12 August 2021, 3-4.15pm, online)
Davy Notebooks Project panel:
| Sharon Ruston | ‘From Poetry to Science: Humphry Davy’s 1800 Notebook, RI MS HD/13/D’ |
| Frank James | ‘Between Dichotomies: Thomas Richard Underwood (1772-1835)’ |
| Eleanor Bird | ‘Reconnecting Humphry Davy’s Notebooks and Transatlantic Slavery’ |
There were 30 participants in this panel.
British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies 51st Annual Conference: Indifference and Engagement (Friday 7 January 2022, 4-6pm, online)
Davy Notebooks Project roundtable contribution:
| Andrew Lacey | ‘Digitizing Eighteenth-Century Letters and Manuscripts: A Conversation: The Davy Notebooks Project’ |
There were 34 participants in this roundtable discussion.
‘Excel in Science’ webinar, University of Nottingham: ‘Re-Emerging Research’ (Wednesday 16 March 2022, 1-2pm, online)
| Andrew Lacey and Eleanor Bird | ‘The Davy Notebooks Project’ |
There were c. 50 participants in this webinar.
Keeping and Making Diaries: Historical Sources and Perspectives: A Two Day International Conference (Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 March 2022, Churchill College, Cambridge)
‘Professional Lives’ panel (Wednesday 23 March 2022, 3.45-5.15pm):
| Sharon Ruston | ‘Examining One of Humphry Davy’s 1800 notebooks, RI MS/HD/13/D’ |
| Frank James | ‘When do Notebooks Become a Diary? The Example of Michael Faraday’ |
There were c. 50 participants in this panel.
British Society for Literature and Science 17th Annual Conference 2022 (Friday 8 April 2022, 11am-12.30pm, Friends’ Meeting House, Manchester)
Davy Notebooks Project panel:
| Eleanor Bird | ‘Exploring Examples of Humphry Davy’s Racial Thinking in His Early Notebooks’ |
| Frank James | ‘Trying to Return Europe to the Ancien Régime: Humphry Davy in Naples Chemically Recovering Ancient Literature, 1817-1820′ |
| Andrew Lacey | ‘Private Investigations? Davy’s Notemaking’ |
There were c. 25 participants in this panel. We also ran an in-person transcribe-a-thon at the conference on Saturday 9 April 2022, 11am-12.30pm. Our 12 participants transcribed 51% of notebook 02D5.
Public lecture for Lancaster and Morecambe U3A Group (Tuesday 26 April 2022, the Duke’s Theatre, Lancaster)
| Andrew Lacey | ‘Humphry Davy (1778-1829): His Life, Letters, and Notebooks’ |
There were c. 70 attendees at this lecture.
British Association for Romantic Studies/North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Joint International Conference 2022: New Romanticisms (Tuesday 2-Friday 5 August 2022, Edge Hill University)
Davy Notebooks Project roundtable contribution:
| Andrew Lacey | ‘New Thoughts on Romantic Digital Editions: The Davy Notebooks Project’ |
Davy Notebooks Project panel:
| Alexis Wolf | ‘The Son of Liberty: Literary and Scientific Experimentation in the Davy Notebooks’ |
| Andrew Lacey | ‘Private Investigations? Davy’s Notemaking’ |
| Eleanor Bird | ‘Humphry Davy, Agriculture, and Abolitionists and Advocates of the Slave Trade in His Network’ |
This was a hybrid conference, with both in-person and online speakers and attendees.
‘Zooniverse – A Beginner’s Guide’ workshop, Archives West Midlands (Wednesday 16 November 2022, 2.30-4.30pm, online)
Davy Notebooks Project contributions:
| Samantha Blickhan | ‘A Brief Introduction to Crowdsourcing on the Zooniverse Platform’ |
| Andrew Lacey | ‘The Davy Notebooks Project’ |
There were 18 participants in this workshop.
Public lecture for U3A Science and Technology Group (Wednesday 11 January 2023, online)
| Andrew Lacey | ‘Humphry Davy (1778-1829): His Life, Letters, and Notebooks’ |
There were c. 75 attendees at this lecture.
Public lecture for the Lunar Society (Wednesday 22 February 2023, online)
| Andrew Lacey | ‘Humphry Davy (1778-1829): His Life, Letters, and Notebooks’ |
There were 41 attendees at this lecture.
British Society for Literature and Science 18th Annual Conference 2023 (Friday 14 April 2023, 3.30pm-5pm, Edinburgh Napier University)
Davy Notebooks Project panel:
| Andrew Lacey | ‘Davy to the Letter’ |
| Eleanor Bird | ‘Humphry Davy, Transatlantic Slavery, and Constructions of Race in His Early Notebooks’ |
| Frank James | ‘Humphry Davy’s Disorganised Notebooks’ |
There were c. 12 participants in this panel. A link to the recording is here.
‘Voices from the Past and Present: Three Talks on Slavery, Migration, and Language’ panel event, Lancaster University (Friday 16 June 2023, 12.30-1.30pm, online)
Davy Notebooks Project contributions:
| Eleanor Bird | ‘Humphry Davy’s Connections to Transatlantic Slavery’ |
| Alex Buck | ‘Finding Fragments: Challenges of Researching the Histories of Enslaved People on Robert Farquhar’s Plantations’ |
| Hannah Parker | ‘Using Slavery Compensation Claims to Uncover Details About Robert Farquhar’s Plantations’ |
There were c. 25 participants in this panel.