Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters

Introducing the product.

Creating the shortlist.

With the autumn launch of the Project’s union catalogue of early modern letters getting ever closer, and issues of design and functionality now sorted, we are turning our attention to broader questions of digital identity, digital presence, and branding. Heeding UCL digital humanities expert Melissa Terras’s insight that online resources ‘should be taking [their] digital identity and digital presence a lot more seriously’, and aware that ‘naming your brand is the most challenging, momentous, and necessary phase in the process of branding’, we hand-picked a crack team of scholars, librarians, editors, and linguists external to the Project to help us formulate an appropriate appellation for our new resource. Over an intensive ‘logo lunch’ at Linacre College, Dr Kim McLean-Fiander guided our set of sobriquet suggesters through a series of mind-bending puzzles and tasks designed to release creative juices, unlock associative thinking, and lead participants to that elusive ideal name. While the results of the exercise will remain under wraps for now, the input we received was invaluable, and we would like to thank all of the participants for giving us their time.