Sean Takats

Sean Takats

Recent posts

Zotero at Twenty

6 minute read

As we approached midnight on October 5, 2006, a small team at the Center for History and New Media put the final touches on the public launch of Zotero. Lead developer Dan Stillman and I chatted with each other the way everyone did back then: on AOL Instant Messenger. We had high hopes for what was to come the next day: our last discussion was about how to count Zotero downloads once we flipped the switch. From a distance of twenty years it might be hard to remember just how revolutionary Zotero promised to be: unlike everything before it, Zotero could recognize what you were reading and automatically save a reference; it could generate accurate citations formatted for any publication’s...

More Hiring!

1 minute read

Over the past few months my new team has been modeling digital research methods into modular “workflows” that can be mixed and recombined in an open-source software workbench we have been prototyping at C²DH. We have made good progress with our small team of five and are now ready moving to the next stage of the project, where we will hire additional humanities researchers and software developers to continue prototyping and begin implementation. Today we’re announcing searches for two new developers to join us this fall. The new developer positions are roughly divided between front-end and back-end responsibilities. For the front-end developer, we’re looking for someone with extensive experience in JavaScript for software development (ideally including React). Because we’re designing...

Now Hiring!

1 minute read

In a few weeks I’ll begin a project – the Digital History Advanced Research Projects Accelerator – as part of my new position at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH). The Accelerator aims to create and promote software that capitalizes on digitalized historical research practices. More important than this software – and the key to its success – is the team I am currently recruiting to participate in its development and design. With the generous support of the Luxembourg National Research Fund and the University of Luxembourg, we’re running searches for a dozen new positions over the next year, including three postdoctoral researchers, three software developers, four fully-funded PhD positions, and administrative staff, and we also have...

Tropy

2 minute read

In late November 2010, on the last day of a research visit to Aix-en-Provence, I set down some thoughts on how historians’ practices had seemed to change overnight: what is the future of the archive? archival work now focused more narrowly, more intensely. but also potentially doesn’t provide enough time to get the feel for the archives and change direction. digital photography as a major change. archives now about raw collection, little or no feedback loop between what’s being observed and what comes next. requires a fundamentally different rhythm, one that i’m not yet comfortable with My reflections — which went on to include such uninspired predictions as “finding aids will soon all be online” — drew on my own...

Long-term Sustainability of PressForward

2 minute read

As this year’s Open Access Week winds down, I’m really pleased to share that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will generously fund a new, three-year phase of PressForward to ensure its long-term sustainability. The key deliverables of the grant are the launch of a dozen high-quality science publications and the continued refinement of the PressForward software to lower the barrier to entry for new research groups who want to create a collaborative publication. While “sustainability” is probably the most dreaded criterion of any grant application, it’s an area that I actually enjoy working on in its own right. At RRCHNM we’ve been fortunate to shepherd Zotero and Omeka through phases of grant funding that were explicitly intended to lay the...