Florida State University Libraries Special Collections and Archives hold the
complete papers of Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-1984). In this workshop we shared an overview of the digital scans of 72 documents initially identified for study as part of a project to digitize and preserve the « shoebox papers » in the collection. In particular, we discussed the process of making sense of mathematical problems found on a variety of repurposed paper. During the workshop we focused on the reconstruction of two investigations: (1) work related to solving polynomial équations of degree n = 3, 4, 5, and 6, and (2) a selection of combinatoric problems. Finally, we sought to connect Dirac’s doodlings to well-known sources from the history of mathematics and their treatment of similar problems.