Tag: Information access

More on the ancient Greek and Latin at Google

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few days ago I gave a link to 500 ancient Greek and Latin texts at Google.  What I had not realised was that this list was not just a bunch of pointers, but a new set of scans, done at high resolution specifically to aid OCR.  A reader has emailed me a link to an article on the Inside Google Books blog — itself new to me. This states, after an intro:

I’m pleased to announce that Google Books is now assisting this work by sharing high-resolution digital scans of over 500 volumes of Ancient Greek and Latin, dating from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. (Of course, downloadable versions of over a million volumes in all fields are available from books.google.com, in a more compressed form.) Jon Orwant and I created this collection using a list of several thousand important Classics volumes identified by our collaborators Professor Gregory Crane and Alison Babeu of Tufts University. We are analyzing additional volumes and expect to be able to release more high-resolution scans in the future.

These scans will aid the development of accurate OCR (Optical Character Recognition) algorithms for Ancient Greek, and provide the basis for electronic versions of important editions of these Classics texts; but perhaps their greatest value will be for the development of new methods in this emerging field. We’re honored that Professor Crane called this donation “a major contribution to what scholars can do.”

It also mentions something equally interesting:

… scholars around the world can now consult a high-resolution digital scan of Venetus A, one of the best manuscripts of the Iliad, at the Center for Hellenic Studies.

Mind you, I find on linking to it that someone at the website decided to block people using Internet Explorer.  That’s strange, but a minor thing.  The great thing is to get the thing online.

Among the manuscripts of the Iliad, one of the oldest and most important is the manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, shelfmark gr. 822.  This is given the reference letter (=siglum) “A” in the editions.  It is not merely a very important copy, beautifully written, nor merely one of the oldest outside of the very extensive papyrus fragments.  It also contains the ancient scholia to the text, originating in the text critical school at the Museum in Alexandria ca. 150 BC.   I have yet to manage to see any of the pages, thanks to the quirk above, but it can only be a very good thing indeed!

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Choking off non-Americans from Google books?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Non-US readers of Google Books aren’t allowed to see most of the content.  This is because of threats by European publishers afraid that somehow they might suffer some financial loss if their captive market could see books before 1923.  Google responded by simply barring access to people outside the US.  After all, if people outside the US want to be uneducated, how is that Google’s problem, they doubtless reasoned.  But it has always been possible for the techno-literate to get around this, albeit with some effort.

But it looks as if Google books might be raising the drawbridge even further.  Today I tried to get access to volume 13 of Texte und Untersuchungen, published in 1895.  Of course as one of the humiliores of the internet, I knew that I would not be allowed to see it.  But I tried my usual methods. 

Unfortunately the download link still did not appear.  With some wrestling, I was able to get a page with a link on, albeit not on the usual page, but for a while I feared the worst.

Never presume that Google books will always be available.  It may not.

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Mischa Hooker’s links – a new incarnation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I can’t be the only one who has found some pages compiled by Mischa Hooker of links to material on Google books extremely useful.  His table of links to the PG was long an aid, although these days I prefer the Cyprian project list.

It seems that Dr Hooker has started a new set of links.  This appears in wikispaces, presumably for the same reason that I have used a wiki — that it’s easier to add links when you find them, ad hoc, if you can bash them in online.  Likely to be very useful.

The list of authors down the left hand side stops with Commodian, in IE6.  I’m not sure if that is the browser or the list.

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Greek and Latin books at Google

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An extremely useful list (thanks to George Kiraz):

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/ancient-greek-and-latin.html

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Oxyrhynchus papyri vols 1-14 online at Archive.org

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Mark Goodacre has made a valuable discovery:

Archive.org now has the first fourteen volumes of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri online in toto and in a variety of formats, for viewing and for download; Volumes 1-5 are digitized by Google Books from Harvard University Library and so should appear also on Google Books in due course.  They do not yet have my favourite format, the flip book, but no doubt that will appear in due course. Volumes 6-14 are digitized by Brigham Young University and include the flip book format. I have also noted below an alternative (and superior) version of Volume 4, from University of California Libraries, which has been online for much longer. Here are the links:

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 1 (1898)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 2 (1899)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 3 (1903)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 4 (1904) [Alternative version]
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 5 (1908)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 6 (1908)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 7 (1910)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 8 (1911)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 9 (1912)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 10 (1914)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 11 (1915)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 12 (1916)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 13 (1919)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 14 (1920)

(HT: Wieland Willker on the Textual Criticism list)

It’s a reminder of how much we owe to Google books and Archive.org.  There is an online site somewhere, where for years academics have been messing around in a snail-like manner.  But this is the raw material.

Quite often an academic library, asked to digitise its collection, will decide to implement some very slow, very expensive ‘Rolls-Royce’ solution.  They talk about “portals”, they talk about getting users to register — even to pay — and all that.  They frequently decline to make the content available in PDF form, because they would “lose control”.  But all these endeavours are futile, and they will all fail.  People don’t want that.  What they want is PDF’s.

It may well be that some site will come into being for collaborative working in the future.  But it won’t be because people are forced to, in order to access some manuscript which happens to be at Crumbagdalen College Oxford because of a historical accident.  It will be where actual value for the user is created.

I hope the arrival of these volumes online gees up the Oxford people.  An online site for the papyri is a good thing; but they need to start with getting all the volumes online, and then with enhancing what those give us.  In that order, please.

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Wikipedia and the British Museum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The British Museum seems to be run by some clever people.  At Digging Digitally there is an article quoting the New York Times, Venerable British Museum Enlists in the Wikipedia Revolution.

The British Museum has begun an unusual collaboration with Wikipedia, the online, volunteer-written encyclopedia, to help ensure that the museum’s expertise and notable artifacts are reflected in that digital reference’s pages.

About 40 Wikipedia contributors in the London area spent Friday with a “backstage pass” to the museum, meeting with curators and taking photographs of the collection. And in a curious reversal in status, curators were invited to review Wikipedia’s treatment of the museum’s collection and make a case that important pieces were missing or given short shrift.

“I looked at how many Rosetta Stone page views there were at Wikipedia,” said Matthew Cock, who is in charge of the museum’s Web site and is supervising the collaboration with Wikipedia. “That is perhaps our iconic object, and five times as many people go to the Wikipedia article as to ours.”

“Ten years ago we were equal, and we were all fighting for position,” Mr. Cock said. Now, he added, “people are gravitating to fewer and fewer sites. We have to shift with how we deal with the Web.”

What unites them is each organization’s concern for educating the public: one has the artifacts and expertise, and the other has the online audience.

Read the whole article.  What is depicted is a model for institutions on how to deal with the internet revolution.  It’s clever, it costs them nothing, it gains the institution respect and traction on the internet… there is, in truth, no downside.

The issue of revenue from images is also addressed.  This is the real barrier in stupid institutions.

Dividing them are issues of copyright and control, principally of images. Wikipedia’s parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, is strongly identified with the “free culture movement,” which generally holds that copyright laws are too restrictive. The foundation hosts an online “commons” with more than six million media files, photos, drawings and videos available under free licenses, which mean they can be copied by virtually anyone as long as there is a credit.

That brought Wikipedia into a legal tussle with another prominent British institution, the National Portrait Gallery, … Both the portrait gallery and the British Museum generate revenue by selling reprints and copies of pieces in their collections.

“Especially at a time like this, we can’t afford to sacrifice any revenue source,” Mr. Cock said.

And while Mr. Wyatt said he “would love a high-resolution image of the Rosetta Stone,” that shouldn’t be Wikipedia’s only goal in working with the museum. He said that there had been some extremism on his side of the debate: “ ‘Content liberation’ is the phrase that has been used within the Wikimedia community, and I hate that: they see them as a repository of images that haven’t been nicked yet.”

I’d have liked to see this issue explored more in what is frankly a splendid article by the NY Times. 

We all hate how Wikipedia is sucking the life out of the web.  We all hate its weaknesses.  But it is there, it is a fact, and it has to be engaged with.  The controversial articles on “Jesus” attract the head-bangers, full of hate, and we can do nothing with such articles to improve them.  But minor articles can be safely created and edited, and I have done so myself.

All credit to Matthew Cock for realising that he can make Wikipedia work for the British Museum, and not just the other way around.  This is a new world.  The clever will make the web work for them; the stupid will cower trying to hold back the tide, and failing.

I am sadly accustomed to the disgusting sight of the British Library pointlessly fighting to keep its collections off-line, and have blogged about it passim.  But this can distract from the fact that other British state-run institutions are not so stupid.  Indeed I suspect that outside the narrow world of academic libraries, most of them are waking up and seeing opportunities.  The National Archives are allowing readers to bring in digital cameras.  The British Museum are seeing a way to make the public promote the national collection online.  And how many others, I wonder?

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Stephanos of Alexandria steps out of the shadows

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In the early 600’s Stephanos of Alexandria was a philosopher interested in alchemy.  His extant works consist of nine orations on alchemy, the last delivered in the presence of the emperor Heraclius.

Three of these were translated into English and published before WW2 in Ambix, the alchemy journal, by Sherwood Taylor.  As I have mentioned before, I discovered a draft of the fourth oration among Taylor’s papers in Oxford a couple of years ago. 

Last year I suggested to the modern editors of Ambix that it might form a nice part of their 75th anniversary issue to publish the material.  They agreed but not a lot happened.

Over the weekend I had an email from Dr Jenny Rampling, who has taken responsibility for this.  She’s in Athens, “cataloguing Hellenistic alchemical manuscripts” — which I suspect means medieval mss. of Hellenistic texts, but is still exciting stuff!  Apparently she’s working with a Greek researcher. 

She tells me that investigation reveals the draft would need revision before it could be published, but the idea is for her co-worker to do that, and that it will indeed appear in Ambix.  She asked my opinion, so I’ve written a letter of suggestions, although how welcome they will be I don’t know — never ask for opinions unless you want to get them!

I’ve also suggested she talk to the CSNTM people.  After all, people in Athens cataloguing mss ought to have some common interests.

So … some progress.  Ancient texts by alchemists are still ancient texts, and ought to be accessible.  Currently they are not.

UPDATE (July 3rd).  No reply or acknowledgement from Jenny Rampling.  Hum.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Cambridge University Library is going to put Codex Bezae online, or so I read in a Daily Telegraph story.   Better still, they’re preparing to put all their books online, and make them freely available.  That’s what we want to hear.

Anne Jarvis, the university Librarian, said that the exciting new plans would open up priceless collections to students worldwide.

She said: “Our library contains evidence of some of the greatest ideas and discoveries over two millennia.

“We want to make it accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world with an internet connection and a thirst for knowledge.

Good for them!  Codex Bezae will be in the first tranche, as — at little pointlessly — will be a Gutenberg bible. 

I hope they attract lots of funding.  This will be the first UK library to take mass free access seriously, and if they do it, will probably guarantee the existence of the library into the digital age.

Dan Wallace and the chaps at CSNTM who photograph manuscripts of the bible were in Cambridge trying to negotiate access.  I suspect their efforts — seemingly fruitless at the time — probably helped change minds and create expectations at CUL.

I’m increasingly impressed with what Anne Jarvis is doing.  I’ve just discovered that even people like me — readers not part of the university — can use the library Wifi network if we get a ‘Lapwing ticket’, valid for a limited period.  It doesn’t look as if they charge, either, which is as it should be.  Lack of access to electronic resources is a real pain for the occasional visitor, and they have addressed it.

I have also received my copy of Croke and Harries, Religious conflict in fourth century Rome, and started to read it.  Lots of excellent texts in translation. 

But it’s much too sunny today to be sat in doors, so I went off to Norwich today instead.

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Sympathy for Hercules

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An Augean day today.  I’ve received an A4 envelope containing a print-off of the translation of the 18 Coptic fragments of Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum) with pencil revisions in the margin, plus revisions of the Coptic transcription, plus notes on the translation of De Lagarde’s Latin preface.  Also an electronic file containing a new version of the translation.  All this has to be merged together, which would anyway be arduous and is hampered by a somewhat disorganised presentation.

De Lagarde benefited from the generosity of the then owner of the Coptic manuscript.  The latter was rather more generous than the British Library of our own day with its talk of copyrights on PDFs which has prevented me seeing it.

Now, since Robert Curzon, with that mindset whereby the British nobles are ever ready to help in every fine endeavour, had promised on 1 May 1866 (after I wrote to him from Schleusingen) to grant me free access to the very valuable books he had collected, in the year 1874 I asked Robert, Lord Zouche, the son of that most magnanimous man, who had meanwhile been summoned to heaven, to honour his father’s promise (I was intending to edit the Egyptian Psalter). 

He very kindly, with truly unheard-of benevolence, entrusted to my piety and learning both the most ancient fragments of the Egyptian Psalms and the codex of which I have just been speaking, sending them to Göttingen. 

This favour was all the more gratifying, the more certain it was that neither in my own Germany were such treasures possessed—for I was born after the riches of the globe had been distributed—nor in the whole of Europe was there to be found, apart from myself, a man who had both studied theology and had acquired some acquaintance with the Egyptian language, and was willing to expend toilsome and thankless effort—and to suffer a large enough financial loss—on the task of editing this catena.

Faced with such generosity, one might hope that De Lagarde would behave similarly.  Alas, at the end of the preface we read:

All those who wish to do so may use my volume, but only with the proviso that without my permission it is not permitted to reproduce what I have edited, nor to include it in the margin of an edition of either the Egyptian New Testament or of the Fathers.

I thank Robert, Lord Zouche, to the highest extent of my abilities for sending the manuscript to me in Göttingen to use.

De Lagarde’s failure to provide a translation was a more certain guarantee that his work would remain unused than this early claim of copyright.  It was successful; the catena remains unknown and unused by scholars.

Let us mourn the passing of the aristocratic spirit, in these days of small minded officialdom, and honour the shade of Robert, Lord Zouche.

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The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I mentioned some time back that I came across the works of the philosopher Stephanos of Alexandria.  In particular I discovered that he delivered nine discourses on alchemy, the last before the emperor Heraclius in the early 7th century.

Three of these discourses were translated into English before WW2 by a chap called Sherwood Taylor, who published them in Ambix, the journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry.  I suspected that more might exist in manuscript, so I located Taylor’s papers, and found a fourth discourse in draft among them.  This I sent to Peter Morris, editor of Ambix, with the suggestion that it might make a nice anniversary item.  He agreed but deputised it to someone called Jenny Rampling.  This was October 2009, since when I heard nothing.  I thought I’d prompt him, so emailed again this evening.

But this all prompted me to go and look at their website.  And … it’s like a glance into the 1980’s.  Every activity seems to be offline.  They look so much like a small band of people, with a very restricted interest, as fan groups  tend to be.  So every such group had to be, before 1995.  It’s not clear that they have moved on that much, tho.  The website is good, but everything points people offline.  They’ve digitised all the back-issues of Ambix — good, although probably not that hard to do — but made sure no-one can see them unless they pay.

I hope they start to reach out.  While I am not very interested in the history of chemistry, it is a pity that the ancient texts embedded in Ambix are not accessible more widely.

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