Stephen C. Carlson has translated this text by ps.Cyprian and placed it online at Google Docs here.
Category: Information access
Marutha of Maiperqat, On the Council of Nicaea
I recently located an unpublished translation, made probably in the 1850’s, of this work. This is now online here. The translation is public domain so copy freely and put online elsewhere, etc. I hope to get the Syriac online if I ever get 5 minutes to spare!
I have some doubts that this is really by Marutha. The text contains almost nothing about the deliberations, and everything in it could be sourced from Eusebius. The extra details all feel like fictional embellishments, and there are many anachronisms in it.
The manuscript has slumbered in Yale University for 150 years. The notes on it by AHW are by Austen H. Wright of the American Mission at Urmia in the 1850’s. He was one of the missionaries who set up a press there and printed the Syriac Peshitta Old Testament in 1851.
British Library Readers Group
I’ve always felt that the BL readers needed a voice in its running, and didn’t get one. So I was delighted today to discover that a British Library Readers Group was set up in January. This followed the announcement that the government was considering chopping 7% off the £100m budget.
The British Library Readers Group is made up of academics, students, journalists, independent scholars, researchers and writers who are readers at the British Library. We have come together to meet one another and to represent readers to the administration and trustees of the British Library.
Our aim is to seek constructive solutions to issues that have an impact upon our working lives in the library.
Please publicise it in mailing lists. No organisation should be allowed to operate without considering the wishes of those who use it.
UK MLA – a white knight for the library user?
Today I discovered that there is a body in the UK called the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. The point of it is somewhat unclear, but it looks as if it might have some input to government policy on how the UK library service is run.
Two things have bothered me for some time about this. Firstly the cost of interlibrary loans is now so great that a reading list of 20 items costs around $180. Of course this means that you can’t pursue a course of study, at that price. Secondly, as databases of journals like JSTOR become the usual way to consult the academic literature, and as outsiders have no access to these, it’s getting more difficult for non-professionals to compete.
What to do? Well, I’ve found that John Dolan is ‘head of library policy’ and written to him. I’ve also written to David Dawson, ‘Senior policy adviser Digital Futures’ and pointed out the problem that the British Library won’t digitise its medieval manuscripts, or let anyone else do so.
It will be interesting to see what response comes back. Someone must be interested in these issues besides me.
Postscript: to his credit David Dawson got back to me very quickly with the following epistle:
The British Library is very active in digitising its collections, but these are obviously huge in scale and scope. I visited your site, and can understand your desire to see the relevant manuscripts digitised.
The BL have a set of standards for the way in which they digitise documents, to ensure that this is done once, and at high quality. I cannot comment on the figures that they gave you, but the BL is following best practice in digitisation.
They are in the process of making large numbers of resources available online – recent projects include millions of pages of newspapers, substantial holdings from the Sound Archive and the Microsoft digitisation project is under way.
http://www.bl.uk/news/2005/pressrelease20051104.html
‘Best practice in digitisation’… or gold-plated? Nothing online, tho, and no prospect of it. This is rather disappointing.
Postscript (21st May): John Dolan has written back to me, and it sounds as if he is indeed in the processing of looking at some of these issues. I will write more on this when I have read his reply.
GCS Eusebius at Google Books
I have this evening discovered two volumes of the Berlin Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller series containing critical texts of works by Eusebius at Google books. A search for “eusebius werke” brought up vol. 2.2 (HE VI-X, Martyrs of Palestine, Rufinus HE X-XI); vol 3 (Onomasticon). I’m not sure what the proper URL’s are, since I’m using a backdoor to access them: anyone?
Postscript: See the comments for links. But I have now tried entering “griechischen christlichen schriftsteller” (without the quotes in Google books). This gets me one link, here, which seems to display no content, and links to three “Other editions” in ‘snippet view’. Can anyone in the US see any of the content for any of these four?
Obtaining a copy of the Armenian text of Eusebius’ Chronicle
Aucher’s 1818 editio princeps is in two volumes, corresponding to the two books of the Chronicle. Cambridge University Library have got back to me with some prices. For a photocopy of the 400 pages of vol. 1 they want ca. $160; for both vols ca. $300. “Bi-tonal scans as PDF files” are $420 and $790 (!).
Nor are CUL just being greedy compared to other libraries, and indeed they are one of the more reasonable ones. Most UK libraries see such requests only as opportunities for profit for what the market will bear; although, of course, those who run those libraries tend to make special arrangements for themselves, at a very special price, as I found out happens at the British Library.
Again, we owe such gratitude to Google Books for freeing us all from this dungeon of high charges and inaccessibility.
So it’s decision time. Clearly I won’t buy PDF’s from them — I can make them myself for nothing from the photocopies. Nor can I afford both volumes. But I might buy a copy of vol.1. It really would be nice to have access to this, when arguments about names arise. I shall look at Thomson’s grammar of Classical Armenian this weekend and decide then.
Any Amount of Books (but smelly ones)
I mentioned in a previous post how the copy of Porphyry’s Letter to Marcella that I obtained proved to be mouldy. Naturally I returned it, and today got the following rather offensive email from the bookseller, Any Amount of Books.
“We will certainly refund your money. But as nobody can detect any smell from this book we ask that you do not order any other books from us on the internet, it does cost us money to send books and in future perhaps it would be better for you to buy books directly so that you can smell them before you buy.”
Postscript: I have today (2nd May) obtained a replacement copy from a US bookseller. The copy above had quite a lot of foxing down one side on every page, despite being advertised as ‘Slight foxing otherwise VG’. But this one is not only clean, but has much less foxing. To cap it all, it is half the price (although postage takes most of that away).
Readers may remember that I was in the market for this book because a library lent me the only copy in this country by ILL, but somehow it never reached me and indeed got lost. It seemed worthwhile for me to replace an item that they still would have, were it not for their kindness in lending. I would have been ashamed to present the Any Amount of Books copy. Thankfully this one will do just fine.
Copyright and barriers to learning
On the ABTAPL list I receive a list of copyright events from Graham Cornish’ Copyright Circle. Most of the items indicate the endless encroachment of lawyers on access to learning. But in the current list there are two entries which indicate a contrary trend.
V&A to scrap academic reproduction fees. By Martin Bailey
In a move which could transform art publishing, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (V&A) is to drop charges for the reproduction of images in scholarly books and magazines….The new scheme will come into effect early next year. The V&A is believed to be the first museum anywhere in the world which is to offer images free of copyright and administrative charges. It also intends to take a “liberal” view on what should be deemed scholarly or educational…. The decision to end charging could well have major implications on art publishing since there will be pressure on other UK museums to follow suit.
The Art Newspaper 01/12/06 http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=525
Model Copyright Agreement – Journals
JISC and SURF have published a model agreement that will help authors make appropriate arrangements with publishers for the publication of a journal article. The main features of the licence are that copyright in the published work remains with the author and the author grants the publisher a licence to publish the work. The new model agreement will be particularly useful where articles are published in the traditional way, with publications being made available only to subscribers. Further information at www.surf.nl/copyrighttoolbox/authors/licence/ (14/11/06)
JISC-Legal Newsletter No. 21, November 2006 http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/newsletter_06-11.html
Most state-funded libraries have fought tooth and nail to keep their content off-line. Recently Karlsruhe went so far as to refuse to allow volunteers to photograph manuscripts which they believed they would have to sell! I received considerable abuse for even suggesting it. The poverty of the British Library site is only matched by the crude refusal to photograph material other than at vast profit, as again I have experienced. The Beinecke Rare Books library tried to charge me $216 for 14 digital photographs, when I wanted a photocopy of 14 pages of a 20th century handwritten translation.
All kudos, then, to the V&A for getting into the internet age. Most of what they have in mind has negligible commercial value. But items that can be seen online can be studied by billions of people who could never visit the museum itself. As the article rightly suggests, this will put pressure on the obscurantists. Similar kudos are deserved by the National Archives in Britain, which has initiated a scheme whereby readers can register their digital cameras and then use them to take copies. (I did suggest that the NA should keep copies of those, but this obvious step to create an archive was a bit further than the staff could envisage).
The second item likewise must benefit everyone. Journals have taken pains to keep material offline, away from the public, and only available to major subscription-paying libraries. Of course this means that the taxpayer who funds it all can’t see it, even though it is perfectly possible and free technologically. As academics retain their own copyright, material will become available to a wider audience.
There are academics who don’t care whether anyone sees their work. I remember an email exchange with a translator of one of Origen’s works who was sublimely indifferent to the fact that his translation was printed in an edition of around 200 copies, all available only in a handful of institutions, and which would never appear online or be accessible to those who pay his salary until 130 years time. But most are pleased to learn that the people value their work, and want to learn from it. These real scholars are the ones on whom the Republic of Letters relies, and they will now be free to teach a wider audience.