This is the first of what will become a regular feature in SHOT. As matters stand, we formally only communicate with one another at the Annual Meeting, and of course many people are not able to attend the meeting every year. The Executive Council is convinced of the need to maintain a lively SHOT community between those meetings. To this end we are looking for new ways to sustain your interest in the Society throughout the year. We have completely redesigned the SHOT website. We are constructing a social media presence. And, we will produce and circulate an eNewsletter on a regular basis. Welcome to Issue #1.
What can you expect to find in these eNewsletters? They will not simply bring you up to date with reports on recent intellectual events in the field. They are also meant to make you aware of the benefits of SHOT membership. Did you know that SHOT will sponsor panels at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in January next year? That we are organizing a special panel for graduate students at the annual meetings of SHOT and the History of Science Society, co-chaired by the Presidents of each? That we have a new Small Grants program to provide seed money for people to organize workshops anywhere in the world, encouraging both a diverse population of applicants, and a broad range of topics and regional settings? That we are making a concerted effort to improve our network of international scholars, over and above meeting out of the United States every three years? That we have established a new Early Career Interest Group with a voting representative on the Executive Council? In short we are making multiple new resources available to our membership in the hope that SHOT will be both your intellectual home (or at least one of them) and a platform that you regularly use to extend your network and to support your scholarly agendas.