What many and varied ways have humans used to write over the years? Through a series of workshops on the History of Text Technologies, scheduled over the 2026-2027 academic year, we will investigate this question. We'll look at books from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, and we'll make some of our own. 

What did people write with before phones, computers, and ballpoint pens? Some of them wrote with quills - feathers, trimmed at the end and dipped in ink. On Wednesday, October 21, SIMS Curator for Digital Humanities Dot Porter and Applied Data Science Librarian Jajwalya Karajgikar will lead a workshop where we will learn about the practice and process of letterlocking, discuss how it fits into the history of encryption, and we'll make our own locked letters. The basis of our workshop is the Letterlocking Project, and we'll be drawing on material from the project website and book. Image is from the Letterlocking Project website.

History of Text Technologies is sponsored by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies and will be held in the Vitale II Lab for Digital Humanities & Book History (Van Pelt Library 623).