From A Don’s Life:

10 things Londoners need to know about having a Classicist in County Hall [link]

For various reasons (mostly involving crutches) I’m watching far too much news in the evenings at the moment. Which is why I found this video, from Pixelsurgeon, oddly compelling. Proof that sometimes, there is just no news…

Excellent overview of how to find images on the internet, with lots of juicy links, from Random Knowledge.

Interesting rumblings in the digital humanities community about the University of Chicago’s Project Bamboo: a Mellon funded, new project, described on their website:

a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary, and inter-organizational effort that brings together researchers in arts and humanities, computer scientists, information scientists, librarians, and campus information technologists to tackle the question: How can we advance arts and humanities research through the development of shared technology services?

Looks interesting. Read the proposal which sets out their aims and objectives. A lot of money for an 18 month project to discover, you know, how we can help those arts and humanities scholarly types actually use these darn computery digitally things, and provide some infrastructure to help them. (I’m particularly loving the line:

“is the state of arts and humanities technology akin to driving in the 1890s? For many in the humanities, computers are like horseless carriages of the late 19th century…”

This may be true for some, and its an interesting proposal to sort out What Needs To Be Done to aid scholars in using computational power and tools in their research. But there is very little evidence that they’ve done their homework to what efforts have gone into this before, and no mention of the digital humanities community/communities (such as ADHO, ALLC, ACH, SDH/SEMI, TEI) and the hundreds of scholars already treading this path or trying to deal with the concerns raised in the proposal. No mention of things like the Methods Network, or AHDS, or any other initiatives in this area (including evidence for success, and reasons for failure). Those listed on the proposal are not the scholars you would expect, who have been working on this for years. There is no real mention on users, use, and usefulness – you can ask a bunch of academics what they *need* or *want* till they are blue in the face, but actually what they will use is generally different.

Which is not to say that this project wont come up with some interesting, and useful findings. It may very well jolt us out of our cosy digital humanities burrow, so its a case of watch this space. But its the first many of us have heard about it, and for many reasons, the words “wheel” and “reinvent” come to mind. But I’m willing to be proved wrong on that one.

Interesting preview video of the New Acropolis museum, introduced by chairman Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, from the BBC. [link]

There’s an interesting to and fro going on at the Centre for the Study of Architecture newsletter, about whether electronic monographs are a useful, feasible, achievable, or appropriate means for humanities scholars to publish their research. Discussion between Judith Winters (editor, Internet Archaeology) and Harrison Eiteljorg II (Editor, CSA) in response to an article Harrison Eiteljorg published in CSA called “The Electronic Monograph: A Scholarly Necessity or the Never-Reached Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow?“. [link]

Interesting overview column on who will break Google’s monopoly in today’s Times. [link]

A nice animation to round off the week… what would happen if data protection policies were ignored, and the domesday book was lost.…

Another addition to the growing amount of genealogical material appearing online – the Origins Network have recently published an index of 28,000 wills from Surrey, England, from the 15th to the 19th Centuries.

An interesting if rather hyperbolic overview appeared in the Guardian, yesterday:

A vivid snapshot of social history, the wills show the importance of small items in less plentiful times: hay, kettles, blankets, butter, bacon, grain and livestock are commonly treasured things passed on to relatives and friends. Everything from a “pair of old stockings” to “gold bodkins” is given away, although wealthier folk list luxuries such as sweetwood boxes and “my best beaver hat”. [link]

(The article failed to stress that you had to subscribe (ie pay) to access them. Genealogy is big business, remember). Still, a very interesting collection – and worth a look at the overview to see the range of material available, and free access to some sample highlights which manage to capture some snapshots of thoughts and worries of the time.

Interesting line up just announced for the summer lecture list of work in process papers in the Digital Classicist series. Worth trotting along to Senate House (London) for, of a friday afternoon.
Very friendly crowd, and good discussions tend to follow.