Digitizing Early Arabic Printed Books: A Workshop

This event is the fourth annual gathering convened by the Digital Islamic Humanities Project at Brown University: a workshop on the topic of print culture in the early modern and modern Middle East, organized in partnership with Gale Publishers. 

The focus of the workshop will be Gale's new digital text archive entitled “Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library”. The archive is based on A. G. Ellis’s catalog of the British Library’s collection of early printed materials from the Arabic-speaking world, and contains approximately 2.5 million pages from historic books on diverse genres, including literature, law, mathematics, medicine, geography, and other topics.

Website: islamichumanities.org/workshop-2016

Attendance is free and open to the public, but please note that space is limited and registration is required.

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WORKSHOP PROGRAM

10:00 AM: Welcome and opening remarks (Elias Muhanna)

10:15 – 11:30: Presentation and demonstration of the “Early Arabic Printed Books” archive along with Gale’s new “DH sandbox” and text mining tools. (Julia de Mowbray and Bret Costain, Gale Publishers)

11:30 – 12:00: Discussion

12:00: Lunch for all workshop participants

12:00 – 1:30: Talk by Dr. Kathryn Schwartz (Digital Library of the Eastern Mediterranean, Harvard University) on the topic “Towards a New Book History of the Modern Middle East”. Discussant: Dr. Cynthia Brokaw (Brown University, History Dept.)

1:30-2:00: Discussion and concluding remarks.

Kind regards,

Elias Muhanna