info-sources-msg - 11/17/95 Non-book info. sources, libraries. NOTE: See also the files: CD-ROMs-msg, maps-msg, SCA-library-lst, publications-msg, museums-msg, videos-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with seperate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the orignator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: HL Stefan li Rous mark.s.harris@motorola.com stefan@florilegium.org ************************************************************************ From: tmyers@unl.edu (tim myers) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: More LISTSERVs Date: 21 Mar 1993 00:13:40 GMT Organization: University of Nebraska--Lincoln sclark@epas.utoronto.CA (Susan Clark) writes: >Greetings all-- > For your dining pleasure, swiped from the pages of the Medieval > Academy News, yet more LISTSERVs to while away your evenings: > CHAUCER@UNLINF.UNL.EDU Chaucer r and Middle English CHAUCER@UNLINFO.UNL.EDU correct address also CALONTIR@UNLINFO.UNL.EDU non-scholarly, but SCA, low volume -- Tim Myers Toli the Curious University of Nebraska-Lincoln Shire of Mag Mor Lincoln, Nebraska Kingdom of Calontir tmyers@unlinfo.unl.edu From: ae766@yfn.ysu.edu (David Sanders) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: New research source Date: 21 Mar 93 16:22:33 GMT Organization: Youngstown State/Youngstown Free-Net Greetings to all, from Vajk! The following came across ANSAX-L Saturday night. The poster has asked that his name be removed, since he had gotten from elsewhere (it did not originate with him). ================================================================= From the good folks who brought to you MALIN, this new wonder: ANNOUNCEMENT OF HNSOURCE The Department of History and Academic Computer Services of the University of Kansas HNSOURCE under the auspices of The History Network to serve as a centralinformation server for historians. The server presently provides connections toon-line library catalogues through a HYTELNET facility, to some data bases and FTP sites that contain materials relevant to historical studies, as well as a full text document archive, access to world-wide gophers, several works on the use of the Internet, some Gutenberg electronic texts, and other facilities. The History Network intends that HNSOURCE eventually provide connections to allpublic access facilities of use to historians, and to serve as a point of collection for materials that historians wish to share with the public. A bulletin board feature is ready to accommodate calls for papers, conference notices, job announcements and the like. HNSOURCE is a hypertext facility with switching facilities provided by LYNX. It is intended to offer a maximum of ease and simplicity of use, and comments, criticisms, and suggestions may be made to the operators from within the system To reach HNSOURCE: TELNET hnsource.cc.ukans.edu login: history no password required. Please feel free to browse and copy whatever you wish. We would particularly appreciate your comments and suggestions, as well as pointers to useful sources and sites, and the donation of whatever materials you think might be of use to others. Also, please think of HNSOURCE when you wish to make announcements of any sort, or if you wish to develop a professional electronic service of any kind. The more widely this facility is used, the more useful it will become. Operators: Marc Becker (MABECKER@UKANVM) Department of History University of Kansas Lynn H. Nelson (LHNELSON@UKANVM) Department of History University of Kansas Snailmail: The History Network Department of History 3001 Wescoe Hall University of Kansas Lawrence KS 66045-2130: Lynn_Nelson Department of History University of Kansas Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: jcumming@epas.utoronto.ca (James Cummings) Subject: HNSource now open for business Organization: University of Toronto - EPAS Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1993 21:57:46 GMT Thought Some SCA-types not on Mediev-l or Ansax-l or some of the other lists might be interested in this new service (though it's not perfect at the moment.) -------cut-----here---------------(go ahead try it!)------ ANNOUNCEMENT OF HNSOURCE The Department of History and Academic Computer Services of the University of Kansas HNSOURCE under the auspices of The History Network to serve as a centralinformation server for historians. The server presently provides connections toon-line library catalogues through a HYTELNET facility, to some data bases and FTP sites that contain materials relevant to historical studies, as well as a full text document archive, access to world-wide gophers, several works on the use of the Internet, some Gutenberg electronic texts, and other facilities. The History Network intends that HNSOURCE eventually provide connections to allpublic access facilities of use to historians, and to serve as a point of collection for materials that historians wish to share with the public. A bulletin board feature is ready to accommodate calls for papers, conference notices, job announcements and the like. HNSOURCE is a hypertext facility with switching facilities provided by LYNX. It is intended to offer a maximum of ease and simplicity of use, and comments, criticisms, and suggestions may be made to the operators from within the system To reach HNSOURCE: TELNET hnsource.cc.ukans.edu login: history no password required. Please feel free to browse and copy whatever you wish. We would particularly appreciate your comments and suggestions, as well as pointers to useful sources and sites, and the donation of whatever materials you think might be of use to others. Also, please think of HNSOURCE when you wish to make announcements of any sort, or if you wish to develop a professional electronic service of any kind. The more widely this facility is used, the more useful it will become. Operators: Marc Becker (MABECKER@UKANVM) Department of History University of Kansas Lynn H. Nelson (LHNELSON@UKANVM) Department of History University of Kansas Snailmail: The History Network Department of History 3001 Wescoe Hall University of Kansas Lawrence KS 66045-2130: Lynn_Nelson Department of History University of Kansas From: VINCENTI@zodiac.rutgers.EDU Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Early English and Norse texts society Date: 14 Apr 1993 11:11:59 -0400 Organization: The Internet SOCIETY FOR EARLY ENGLISH AND NORSE ELECTRONIC TEXTS We announce with this notice, which we are sending to several related lists, the formation of a new scholarly organiza- tion, The Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET). SEENET will procure, produce, and disseminate scholar- ly electronic editions of Old Norse, Old English and Middle English texts. We will combine the full capacities of computer technology with the highest standards of traditional scholarly editing to publish machine-readable texts with reliable introduc- tory materials, annotations, and apparatus. Texts will conform to the Text Encoding Initiative's (TEI) guidelines for markup in the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) format. An electronic text offers unprecedented advantages to historians, literary critics, linguists, and editors. Unlike earlier, printed critical texts, the electronic text permits manipulations of individual manuscripts, archetypes, and critical texts as well as combinations of each. Such texts lend them- selves to sophisticated searches, concordancing, collations, and other forms of text retrieval. Editors may present in full both "good" and "bad" manuscripts, permitting literary historians to study the history of the reception of the text as shown by scribal changes or marginal annotations. Historical linguists may study developments in the history of the language through access to large databases of scribal spellings in all the dia- lects and time periods reflected in many different textual traditions. Scholars interested in stylistic analysis are able to make fuller and more complete studies of metrical, lexical, or syntactic patterning than are possible with printed texts. Moreover, the extremely flexible nature of an electronic text is ideal for representing complex textual traditions, even of works like Piers Plowman, where editors confront high degrees of ambi- guity and uncertainty. Electronic editions will accommodate scholars who prefer "best text" documentary editions as well as those who want the best possible modern editorial reconstruc- tions. Questions of the accessibility and quality of electronic texts are, therefore, a matter of current concern to a scholarly community increasingly enabled by electronic media. We are all aware that the limitations imposed by the printed codex need no longer constrain our historical, cultural, linguistic, or textual scholarship. Nevertheless, the institutional means for producing and disseminating reliable electronic texts are at present haphazard and inadequate. Scholars familiar with the Oxford Text Archive or with the Anglo-Saxon corpus know only too well how various is the quality of texts in those useful collections. Meanwhile, novice editors enthusiastic about computing are adapting older printed editions for more or less elaborate forms of textual manipulation. Unhappily, such editions are more often selected for the single reason that they are out of copyright than for the quality of their texts. Furthermore, large and extremely costly commercial projects such as the Chadwyck-Healey version of the Patrologia Latina or their similar corpus of English poetry have become means of disseminating older, obsolete editions. Such collections are too immediately useful to be dis- missed in spite of the uneven quality of the texts thus made available, but scholars are coming to associate electronic texts with poor editions. If the full potential of computer technology is to be realized by scholars in the humanities, our first and most important task will be to make available reliable scholarly editions, texts that are as sophisticated in their linguistic, paleographic, codicological, historical dimensions as they are in their computer technology. PUBLICATIONS Our Editorial Board will solicit, evaluate, select, and oversee scholarly editions for publication in three series. SERIES A will consist primarily of book-length editions published on floppy disks (usually under five mega- bytes). For this series we will publish both diplomat- ic transcriptions of manuscript texts and critical texts, or combinations of the two. Texts will be accompanied by an introduction as well as appropriate historical, paleographic, codicological, lexical, and interpretative annotations. SERIES B will consist of culturally important works with complex textual or critical traditions. Texts in this series will accommodate some or all of the follow- ing features: (a) digitized facsimiles of some or all manuscripts, (b) diplomatic transcriptions of each manuscript with appropriate annotation, (c) a reconstructed archetype with annotation, (d) an edited text with annotations (perhaps incor- porating critical comments of previous editors), (e) a display of collated variants, (f) lemmatized concordances of each manuscript, the archetype, and the critical text, (g) critical introduction, and (h) a glossary. Texts in Series B will be published on CD-ROM disks or tape. SERIES C will serve an interim function by publishing electronic versions of useful older editions with SGML markup, until such time as the works may be re-edited. One example might be an electronic version of Finnur Jo'nsson's Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning pub- lished in 1912-15 with both diplomatic transcriptions from single manuscripts (Series A) and heavily edited texts of the skaldic corpus (Series B). An electronic text of this outdated printed text would serve until SEENET is able to publish new electronic versions of the skaldic corpus. STRUCTURE OF THE SOCIETY (a) The Editorial Board Peter Baker, The University of Virginia. Hoyt N. Duggan, The University of Virginia. A. S. G. Edwards, University of Victoria, British Columbia Anthony Faulkes, The University of Birmingham Ralph Hanna III, University of California--River- side Judith Jesch, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Nottingham John Price-Wilkin, Information Management Coordi- nator, Alderman Library, The University of Virginia Peter Robinson, Computing Service, Oxford University Thorlac Turville-Petre, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Nottingham (b) The ADVISORY BOARD consists of an international group of distinguished medievalists who will advise SEENET's Board of Edi- tors on matters of policy. The present Advisory Board consists of the following scholars: Professors John Alford, Michigan State University; Ste- phen Barney, University of California, Irvine; Larry D. Benson, Harvard University; John Burrow, Bristol; Patrick Conner, West Virginia University; Marilyn Deegan, Oxford University; Christine Fell, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Nottingham; Allen Frantzen, Loyola University, Chicago; David Greetham, Graduate School and University Center, CUNY; Thomas J. Heffernan, University of Tennessee; Robert L. Kellogg, University of Virginia; Kevin Kiernan, University of Kentucky; V.A. Kolve, University of California, Los Angeles; Ian Lancashire, University of Toronto; Michael Lapidge, Cambridge University; Anne Middleton, Univer- sity of California, Berkeley; Alistair Minnis, Univer- sity of York; Douglas Moffat, University of Michigan; Derek Pearsall, Harvard University; Fred Robinson, Yale University; Geoffrey Russom, Brown University; R. A. Shoaf, University of Florida, A. C. Spearing, Univer- sity of Virginia; and Paul Szarmach, SUNY Binghamton. (c) The Members of the Society Members will pay an annual fee which will entitle them to receive the SEENET Newsletter and one text from Series A or C. Just as with the Early English Text Society, members will be able to purchase SEENET's other electronic texts at a discounted price, and the texts will be available to non-members at a higher price. We are presently seeking the sponsorship of a major academic press to publish our three series, and it would be helpful in that effort if we can offer pub- lishers an idea of the potential membership for the new society. We would like to know what kinds of member- ship fees would be acceptable and whether scholars would be willing to submit their scholarly electronic texts to SEENET for publication. Response Form 1. Will you be likely to join SEENET? 2. How much would you be willing to pay per year to be a member of SEENET and receive one text from Series A or C? We are negotiating with publishers, and prices will depend upon costs, but we expect that annual dues would be under $30.00 US or #15 sterling. 3. Are you interested in texts in Old English? Old Norse? Middle English? 4. Characterize briefly the purposes for which you need machine- readable texts (e.g., lexical, syntactical, metrical, stylistic, language history, dialectology, other?). 5. Do you have software available to you that will interpret SGML marked up text? 6. On what platform(s) will you use electronic texts? UNIX DOS MAC OS/2 WINDOWS OTHER 7. Should SEENET provide software for concordancing, collating, searching its texts? 8. Have you produced or have in preparation an electronic text? Would you consider submitting it for publication? 9. What texts would you most like to see available in electronic form? We invite comments, criticism, and support from medievalists in all disciplines. Responses by e-mail may be directed to hnd@virginia.edu (or) hnd@virginia.bitnet or by regular post to either Thorlac Turville-Petre Department of English University of Nottingham Nottingham NG7 2RD England or Hoyt N. Duggan Department of English The University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903. From: gbrent@rschp1.anu.EDU.AU (Geoffrey Brent) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Vatican library Date: 10 May 1994 20:42:28 -0400 Organization: the internet Good gentles, the following is for your interest, from _New Scientist_ 7/5/94. **** Priceless historic manuscripts from the Vatican's library - Ptolemy's Geography, early printed works, Virgil's poems - could soon be called up onto computer screens via the Internet computer network. The library has just begun an 18-month pilot project to study ways to make part of its collection of 150 000 manuscripts and two million books more accessible to scholars, while protecting them from possible damage. IBM will help on the project. More than 10 000 pages from illuminated manuscripts and books will be scanned into a database. The images will then be processed to remove stains, magnify details, increase contrast and restore faded colours. The library is also computerising its two million index cards, and will link them to the image database. The Pontifical Catholic University in Rio De Janiero will keep duplicate databases to serve computer networks in North and South America. Even when compressed, the data will occupy about 50 gigabytes. Among the library's 500-year-old collection are 8000 books published in the first 50 years of the printing press and the four oldest manuscripts of Virgil's poems. Because the library has limited space and staff, only 2000 people are allowed to use it each year. "This will mean people can study the works from their own university," says an IBM spokesman. **** I hope this is of some interest to those who sek historical books; I have no further information on the subject. Regards, Geoffrey the Quiet Edited by Mark S. Harris info-sources-msg