On behalf of Harvard Library:

Calling all humanists, computer programmers, and designers!

Harvard Library is hosting a 24-hour hackathon! It’s free and open to everyone – not just coders – so mark your calendars for March 29th and 30th, and sign up with your friends. Our goal is to develop a new search engine for research in the humanities based on a technique called concept search.

What’s a hackathon? It’s an event that brings together computer programmers, library-information specialists, web designers, graphic designers, and humanists to collaborate intensively on a single project. We’re sending this invite to relevant groups around Boston area. We need a lot of people who are interested in computer science and the humanities. Ideally, some of you will have a foot in both disciplines. The test-corpus that we’ll be using is drawn from the period of the American Revolution, so, for you humanists out there, be sure to sign up if you have any interest in the eighteenth century!

Where? Cabot Library, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA

When? March 29th at 3pm until March 30th at 3pm

Extra Enticements? We’ll provide free food throughout the event, and there will also be hundreds of dollars of prizes in the form of Amazon gift cards. What we hope will cause you to sign up, though, is the chance to work with students and researchers across a variety of disciplines, and to push forward the boundaries of what’s possible in the humanities!

Click here to view the event flyer.