John A. Walsh is an assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University, where he teaches and conducts research in the areas of digital humanities and digital libraries. Current research projects include: The Swinburne Project, The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, and Comic Book Markup Language.

My presentation will look at current progress, developments, and challenges in the Chymistry of Isaac Newton project. The Chymistry of Isaac Newton is an online digital edition of the alchemical writings of Isaac Newton, of which only a fraction has been previously edited and published. In addition to the fascinating nature of the content, particularly interesting aspects of the project include the extension of the Unicode standard to accommodate the many alchemical symbols, often unique to Newton, in the manuscripts and the effort to provide facilities for user annotation of both digital text and manuscript images. In my discussion of the project, I will also look at the practice and discipline of alchemy as a metaphor for digital humanities projects like the Chymistry of Isaac Newton