Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was perhaps the most famous chemist of the early nineteenth century. Davy is best known for his discovery of several chemical elements (including sodium and potassium), his experiments with nitrous oxide and his invention of the miner’s safety lamp that bore his name. Davy’s notebooks, held at the Royal Institution of Great Britain and Kresen Kernow, contain details of his scientific experiments, poetry, geological observations, travel accounts, and personal philosophy.  

The Library was a key partner on The Davy Notebooks Project, a four-year AHRC-funded citizen science project to transcribe and annotate the notebooks. A team of researchers, led by Professor Sharon Ruston, worked with a group of over 3600 global volunteers utilising the citizen science platform Zooniverse.

Staff from the Library provided guidance to the project team on images, technical standards and metadata. The Library’s Digital Innovation Team worked with the outputs of the volunteers, and built the images into a searchable archive, complete with transcriptions and annotations, on our Lancaster Digital Collections platform.

The completed collection features high quality, zoomable images utilising the International Image Operability Framework (IIIIF). IIIF is a global open standard enabling researchers to examine, compare, annotate and share archival material. Lancaster is a member of a global community of libraries and museums using the standard.

The project is an exemplar of the Library’s Towards 2025 vision, embodying our approach to co-curate, co-create and share knowledge, to create dynamic collections and engage as a trusted partner in the research endeavour.

Welcoming the launch of the notebooks, Andrew Barker, Director of Library and Learning Development said “Our work on the Davy Notebooks Project puts us at the forefront of digital humanities leadership within university libraries. It has been a huge project with great endeavour by library colleagues, and it is a significant achievement that we can make visible documents of such historic importance. As the famous lamp invented by Davy illuminated the coalfields of 19th Century England, our Lancaster Digital Collections are illuminating our past, making historical artefacts visible and open to all. We are delighted to be at the centre of such an important project working in partnership with our academic colleagues and numerous citizen scientists and look forward to more projects of similar scale and value”.

Findings from the project are documented on the Davy Notebooks Project Blog. The full collection of Davy’s Notebooks can be found on Lancaster Digital Collections.