8,527 research outputs found

    Unwrapping crocodiles

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    Preprint of an article by Jules Winterton, Associate Director and Librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

    Especially the Parchments

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    It was August of 1974. We had just moved to Miami Springs, Florida, where on july 1 I took up my duties as president of Miami Christian College, having left a most enviable position at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and a bewildered band of faculty friends. The man I hired to build shelving around the room that would become my study had finished his work and I was in the process of sorting and shelving some 4,000 books. In the midst of the effort, my wife came into the room, watched for a while silently, and finally asked the question, You really love your books, don\u27t you? That total is now down to about 3,000, but the sentiment has not changed. We of the dinosaur age admit that computers have taken over the world but too many of us know a shining piece of hardware stuffed with miraculous software can never take the place of a library. When some people move to a new town, they search out the best restaurants, perhaps a health club, parks, pools, churches and malls. Not I. First, show me the library

    Long-Term Preservation of Digital Records, Part I: A Theoretical Basis

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    The Information Revolution is making preservation of digital records an urgent issue. Archivists have grappled with the question of how to achieve this for about 15 years. We focus on limitations to preservation, identifying precisely what can be preserved and what cannot. Our answer comes from the philosophical theory of knowledge, especially its discussion about the limits of what can be communicated. Philosophers have taught that answers to critical questions have been obscured by "failure to understand the logic of our language". We can clarify difficulties by paying extremely close attention to the meaning of words such as 'knowledge', 'information', 'the original', and 'dynamic'. What is valuable in transmitted and stored messages, and what should be preserved, is an abstraction, the pattern inherent in each transmitted and stored digital record. This answer has, in fact, been lurking just below the surface of archival literature. To make progress, archivists must collaborate with software engineers. Understanding perspectives across disciplinary boundaries will be needed.

    Introduction

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    The seminars entitled Palaeography Between East & West, which I convened at Sapienza University, aimed at offering a forum, a place of sharing knowledge and debate, to scholars who deal with manuscript materials in various languages and alphabets. Entitled “Paleografia, paleografie. Esperienze a confronto” (2 March 2011), “Tra lingue e scritture. Itinerari grafici nel Mediterraneo e oltre” (2 April 2012), “La Paleografia tra Oriente e Occidente” (5 April 2013), “La Paleografia tra Oriente e Occidente – Palaeography between East and West” (19 May 2014), these seminars (Figs. 1-4) gathered contributions about very different areas. The essays gathered in this volume contribute to the idea of a world pale- ography. I very much hope that the field of palaeography, and the related do- mains of book-history and manuscript-culture, will receive more attention in future, and scientific recognition as an autonomous domain of research with- in Islamic studies and as a proper field of research within palaeographical studies

    Codex Sinaiticus as a Window into Early Christian Worship

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    Codex Sinaiticus is the oldest and most complete New Testament in Greek known to exist. Its two colophons at the end of 2 Esdras and Esther indicate a possible connection with Pamphilus’ famous library at Caesarea in Palestine. Origen was head of a school for catechumens during his days in Alexandria in Egypt and later began a similar school in Caesarea. Pamphilus was Origen’s star pupil and later directed his school in Caesarea. These colophons may connect Sinaiticus with an ancient tradition of early Christian worship and instruction of new converts, possibly exhibited in particular scribal features. These scribal features are primarily located at “two-ways” lists of “virtue and vice” in the New Testament, which were popular methods of instructing the essentials of the faith and are found throughout early Christian literature. These areas in the New Testament (and in the epistle of Barnabas) were emphasized through paragraph ‘lists’ by the scribes of Sinaiticus. These ‘lists’ were most likely recited by the ancient reader in a distinctive way for the audience. It is possible that the audience interacted with the reader as the text was recited. This paper surveys the ancient practice of the public reading of scripture during Christian gatherings and the use of punctuation and lectional marking in manuscripts to aid readers in their task. A possible connection with earlier manuscripts is explored by a cursory examination of a similarity in formatting between Sinaiticus and P46, a second century copy of Paul’s epistles. When taken collectively, though sparse and fragmentary, the evidence suggests that Sinaiticus preserves an ancient practice of Christian instruction located in the unique paragraph ‘lists’ of the “two-ways” theme

    Linking Text and Image with SVG

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    Annotation and linking (or referring) have been described as "scholarly primitives", basic methods used in scholarly research and publication of all kinds. The online publication of manuscript images is one basic use case where the need for linking and annotation is very clear. High resolution images are of great use to scholars and transcriptions of texts provide for search and browsing, so the ideal method for the digital publication of manuscript works is the presentation of page images plus a transcription of the text therein. This has become a standard method, but leaves open the questions of how deeply the linkages can be done and how best to handle the annotation of sections of the image. This paper presents a new method (named img2xml) for connecting text and image using an XML-based tracing of the text on the page image. The tracing method was developed as part of a series of experiments in text and image linking beginning in the summer of 2008 and will continue under a grant funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. It employs Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) to represent the text in an image of a manuscript page in a referenceable form and enables linking and annotation of the page image in a variety of ways. The paper goes on to discuss the scholarly requirements for tools that will be developed around the tracing method, and explores some of the issues raised by the img2xml method

    Prim Drift, CopyBots, and Folk Preservation: Three Copyright Parables about Art in the Digital Age

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    This paper employs a series of case studies from the domains of digital arts and creative/experimental new media to elicit tensions and contradictions in the current state of copyright and intellectual property law. I pay particular attention to the role of the "pirate" as preservationist--rather than taint or corrupt, historically we know that piracy has helped guarantee the survival of important works of literature and art. Throughout, I insist that the humanist is not a dabbler or interloper in these matters; humanistic knowledge, particularly semiotics (the study of sign systems) has the potential to lend consistency and coherence to case law that is currently shot through with loopholes, contradictions, and dead ends. To that end, I also outline the potential of a center devoted to intellectual property law and humanities advocacy

    The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections

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    The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology ïŹrst opened its doors in 1915, and since then has attracted visitors from all over the world as well as providing valuable teaching resources. Named after its founder, the pioneering archaeologist Flinders Petrie, the Museum holds more than 80,000 objects and is one of the largest and finest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world. Richly illustrated and engagingly written, the book moves back and forth between recent history and the ancient past, between objects and people. Experts discuss the discovery, history and care of key objects in the collections such as the Koptos lions and Roman era panel portraits. The rich and varied history of the Petrie Museum is revealed by the secrets that sit on its shelves

    A Contract for the Advance Sale of Wine

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    Edition of a sale of wine in advance from Byzantine Egypt (P.Vindob. inv. G 40267). Notable features include the guarantee clause and the supply of jars by the seller, both of which are put in a wider context
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