Programme

• 14h - Rebekah Higgitt (Principal Curator of Science, National Museums Scotland), Connecting and sharing observatory histories and archives as online data
  
  This talk will focus on aspects of two digital projects, Tools of Knowledge and Voyages in Time, both of which have at their core data created at the Royal Observatory Greenwich (ROG). The first draws on the SIMON database of scientific instrument makers in Britain and Ireland, 1550-1914, largely the work of Gloria Clifton, former Head Curator at the ROG. The information included reflects the interests of scientific instrument curators generally, but the makers of instruments at the ROG and other observatories feature strongly and extends to the chronometer makers whose names were included in reports of the Observatory’s annual chronometer trials. The core work of the Tools of Knowledge project was to remodel the SIMON data semantically, making it explorable by researchers and ready to link to other datasets. Relevant information that would enrich or could link to the new database (SEMSIM) is held in museum databases and observatory archives. Among the latter are the ROG’s Chronometer Ledgers, which record the issue of chronometers to naval vessels and for other purposes. The Voyages in Time project is using crowdsourced transcription to create a suitable dataset to test the lining of databases hosted on the Arches heritage data management platform. Ultimately, this data will be openly available, but the volunteer crowdsourcing project has been a good means of sharing this work and the relevant histories with an interested audience. It is hoped that, in the future, such linked datasets might also be used to engage wider publics by helping provide narratives – human and object biographies, or business and institutional histories – that are shareable online.
   
• 15h30 - Antonella Gasperini (INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova) et Valeria Zannini (INAF- Osservatorio astronomico di Arcetri), Polvere di Stelle (Stardust), a web portal for the Italian cultural heritage of astronomy
  
  The cultural heritage of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) includes about 7000 rare books, more than three million archival documents, and over a thousand scientific instruments. These collections represent the most important milestones of Italian astronomical history. In order to valorize this historical heritage for the widest audience, INAF has created "Polvere di Stelle" (Stardust), a web portal dedicated to Italian astronomical libraries, archives, and museums. The portal offers tools and databases to facilitate astronomical research and increase knowledge of one of the richest astronomical legacies in the world. In a single virtual location, it provides useful tools for sharing digital resources and services for current research. The portal allows researchers and the general public to search the bibliographies of books and periodicals, ancient and modern, and other databases including manuscripts, instruments, archives, biographies of astronomers, and all the events dedicated to the promotion of this heritage. An important part of the portal is also a digital showcase for rare books.