From the 23rd to the 25th of February 2011, the Universitat de Barcelona will be hosting an International Symposium on the transmission of knowledge through IT within the field of Humanities. The event will bring to light well-established initiatives on the diffusion of high-level research through computing technology, on-line publishing or electronic formats.

The developments in the production of new research tools over the second half of the twentieth century have favoured a progress in the acquisition and divulgation of knowledge that could hardly be thought of decades ago. This fact is not only true for the scientific disciplines, but it has also enhanced the exchange of ideas in the Humanities field. Old texts corpora (literary as well as linguistic), metric indexes, databases on manuscripts, printed copies, iconographic sources, digitalisations of old collections or catalogues in the main research institutions, long considered as rare items, have become essential research tools in a short period of time. The use of the Internet promotes the spreading and the communication of knowledge, ensuring a fast, universal diffusion of science and a democratization of research tools.

Historians, philosophers and philologists, to mention but a few of the Humanistic disciplines, benefit now from research tools whose value has yet to be recognised to the right extent. The production of such resources requires an investment of energy, time and patience that is sometimes neglected. This Symposium intends to acknowledge the effort of the professionals who created those tools and generously offered them to the scientific community.

To this end, we will be running a set of papers dealing with the current state of the matter within the national and the international scope. The Symposium will profit from the presence of well-renowned, experienced scholars whose achievements have supplied indispensable research instruments for the scientific community.

At the same time, the Symposium will hold a series of panels that will offer researchers the chance to expose works in progress or detailed analysis of problems concerning IT and research in Humanities. Each panel will consist of a set of brief speeches and a session in the Computer Room, where researchers will be able to exchange information with the audience and answer any kind of related questions. The equipment in the room will provide real-time access to the Internet and to electronic resources (CD-ROM, Demos, etc.).

Representatives of the chief research institutions and heritage preservation foundations will take the floor in a group of sessions (“activitats”) in which they will show to the audience the latest tools made available to researchers, from catalogue digitalisations to any kind of databases. These sessions will provide an opportunity for library and archive users –actual as well as virtual– to communicate and collaborate with the professionals who, frequently on scarce means, endeavour to assist the progress of research.