It was a pleasure for me to represent the EAN at the 1st EBM meeting in held in Paris (La Salpétrière Hospital) on May 23, 2017. The objective of the EBM project is to preserve and to promote collections of archives related to the History of the various disciplines concerned by brain science (not only neurology, but mostly). Archives may be books, letters, instruments, neuropathological collections, correspondences between scientists, locals etc). Currently, the main project is to conduct a census of museums (open to the public), collections (may be private and not open to the public), libraries and archives of any kind.
This was a small meeting (20 persons) representing societies, mainly scientists, but also persons responsible for museums. The meeting room was located just next to the Charcot library. The meeting was mainly a brainstorming. I made a short presentation explaining what the EAN already does for history (neurological walk at our meeting, history session, and project on the website), and what we could also do to help to help this project, e.g. to promote a network around the preservation of archives, and to see if our members (individuals and national societies) could help identifying what archives are available (or could become) in their country and in their field of expertise.
More on this project can be found on the website of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) at : http://www.fens.org/Outreach/History/EBM/
Further collaboration with this project will be encouraged, and members who are interested to work on this project can contact either Eveline Sipido (sipido@ean.org) or me (didier.leys@univ-lille2.fr).
Didier Leys, EAN Secretary General
