On the Waterfront 36
On the Waterfront is the semi-annual magazine of the IISH. This is issue 36 (2018)
On the Waterfront : newsletter from the Friends of the IISH
Authors: Bouwe Hijma, Huub Sanders, Eric de Ruijter
Place of publication: Amsterdam
Year: 2018 / Issue: 36 / Format: 16 pp.
Including lectures by Annemieke van Bockxmeer, Peter Jan Knegtmans and Huub Sanders.
Introduction
In the first half of 2018 energies at the Institute were channelled toward its evaluation by an external committee of experts from academia and collections. On 15 and 16 March this committee visited the Institute and interviewed many staff
members. While the definitive outcome has not been disclosed yet, in an initial reaction at the end of the visit on 16 March the iish received great praise for the progress accomplished since the evaluation in 2011.
The Institute organized a great many activities concerning the trade unions in the first half of 2018, including the launch of ‘trade union stories,’ the interviews with Wim Kok, the project ‘Vele Handen’ concerning the andb, and the report ‘the precarious polder.’ Loran van Diepen reports on this work in the feature article of this issue.
From 11 to 13 April, the iish hosted the Archivematica Camp, an international gathering for people using Archivematica to preserve digital archives. The open source system has been selected by the iish for this increasingly important
aspect of archive work. The gathering was lively and dynamic. Many of the above activities took place in the areas left vacant by the Press Museum. Now called the Max Nettlau Room, it is pleasant and spacious and offers many opportunities.
The final note concerns the recent grant to clariah+. The consortium in which the iish participates was awarded a total of 13.8 million euros by the Ministry of Education and Science. This sum will enable the next step in advanced humanities research, dedicated mainly to analysing the content of digital texts. The option enabling comprehensive searches of very large text files in a single step, rather than readers needing to sift through each individual source text, is conducive to entirely new research questions. The iish wants to be involved in such advances.
Huub Sanders
