Picture of Polina Ilieva
Polina Ilieva
Polina is Associate University Librarian for Collections and UCSF Archivist.

Call for Proposals for the Fourth Workshop on Scientific Archives

Update: The abstract submission deadline has been extended to Monday, January 22, 2024.

The Committee on the Archives of Science and Technology of the Section on University and Research Institution Archives of the International Council on Archives is pleased to announce the Fourth Workshop on Scientific Archives. This workshop aims to bring together a diverse community of collaborators participating in generating, preserving, arranging, processing, appraising, digitizing, providing access to the contemporary archives of science and technology.

Past workshops:

Details for the Fourth Workshop

Date: Wednesday, June 5 and Thursday, June 6, 2024
Hosted by: University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Library, USA
Registration: January or February, 2024

Day 1 – June 5, 2024

The first day will include traditional presentations with an emphasis on the theme of open archives and open science. Topics may include but are not limited to the following:

  • Partnership between scientists and archivists in appraisal of modern scientific records
  • Barriers for creating open archives
  • Silences and gaps in scientific archives
  • Archives practices for increasing equity
  • Scientific archives and digital humanities/digital health humanities
  • AI and scientific archives
  • Collections and archives as data
  • Developing professional skills and knowledge base in scientific archives
  • Collaborative science and Big Team science challenges for archiving
  • Opportunities for engagement, teaching with and exhibiting scientific collections

Day 2 – June 6, 2024

The second day will be organized as an “unconference,” or a participant-driven meeting. We will come together to identify an agenda and discussion topics focused on prominent themes derived from input collected during the first day of the workshop. We will share challenges, develop solutions, generate ideas, and build partnerships. All attendees are welcome and encouraged to join and contribute. You don’t need to submit a proposal to participate in the unconference.

Call for proposals

The organizing committee is accepting presentation proposals of papers from archivists, historians, scientists, engineers, data specialists, curators, and others. These presentations will be 20 minutes and the committee is prioritizing proposals that represent the global context of scientific archives.

Please submit a short abstract of 400 words with a bibliography of at least two items by Monday, January 22, 2024 (now closed.)

Selections will be made by February 10, 2024 and selected speakers will be notified. The full program will be published in early March 2024. Limited travel funds will be available for interested speakers and participants. Applications for these funds will be made available between February and March 2024. Further information will follow.

As part of the organizing committee’s commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion, we aim to make this workshop accessible to speakers and participants from different backgrounds, countries and perspectives. We look forward to receiving your abstracts and seeing you in San Francisco in 2024!

Apply for travel funding

Deadline is March 1, 2024

Questions?

Please contact Polina Ilieva at polina.ilieva@ucsf.edu.

Organizing committee

  • Bethany Anderson, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
  • Jean Marie Deken, SLAC Archives, History & Records Office (AHRO) and Research Library, Stanford, USA
  • Polina Ilieva, associate university librarian for collections and UCSF archivist, USA
  • Anne-Flore Laloë, European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), Germany
  • Rebekah Kim, California Academy of Sciences Library and Archive, USA
  • Ana Margarida Dias da Silva, Archive of the University of Coimbra’s Department of Life Sciences, Center for the History of Society and Culture, Portugal
  • Melanie Mueller, American Institute of Physics, USA
  • Laura Outterside, records manager, European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility, Germany
  • Patrick Shea, chief curator of archives and manuscripts for the Othmer Library of Chemical History at the Science History Institute, USA
  • Venkat Srinivasan, head of archives at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, India