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Friday, May 27, 2016

Vanderbilt Symposium

SYRIAC WATCH: Vanderbilt Libraries to host ‘Cultural Heritage at Scale’ symposium (Ann Marie Deer Owens).
Understanding the opportunities and challenges related to building sustainable national-scale digital humanities projects is one of the goals of a free symposium at the Vanderbilt University Central Library June 2 and 3.

“Cultural Heritage at Scale” is co-sponsored by Vanderbilt Libraries, the Council on Library and Information Resources, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The event is open to scholars, students and other interested individuals. However, space is limited and registration is required.

“We are pleased to convene this symposium in conjunction with Vanderbilt’s continuing involvement in and support for national-scale digital projects,” said Jody Combs, interim dean of libraries. “Digital resources have tremendous potential to help transform higher education in terms of global access, scholarly productivity, teaching and sustainability.”

Vanderbilt faculty members Jane Landers and David Michelson are among the speakers who will discuss their digital cultural preservation projects.

[...]
Professor Michaelson brings us to the Syriac part:
Michelson, an assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Vanderbilt Divinity School, is one of three researchers to receive an NEH Humanities Collections and References Resources grant to support the work of Syriaca.org, an online scholarly reference work on the Syriac language and culture, now hosted by Vanderbilt’s library. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic used by early Christians across the Middle East and Asia. Syriaca.org aims to make resources for the study of Syriac accessible to a wider audience and works closely with the Syriac heritage communities to preserve and document their endangered culture.
The Syriaca.org website has been mentioned previously here.