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CERES Harvest IV.i
20.4.99

He, that but saw you weare the wheaten hat,
Would call you more than Ceres, if not that.

INTRODUCTION
With now unwonted alacrity we follow up last month's Harvest with another modest but well-winnowed crop, the first of our fourth series. Included are some plants with all the appearance of being CERES clones - though genetically modified for higher productivity and ease-resistance. Nothing revolutionary or ground-breaking this time, but confirmation that good use is being made of the internet to deliver substantial and well-organised services to the scholarly community.

Talking of which, CERES is pleased to announce the second of its online projects under our COPIA banner. 'Sidneiana' is a set of pages offering documents and materials relating to the Sidney family. At present these include:

The pages are at: http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/sidneiana.

We hope that you may wish to contribute suggestions or even whole pages to this framework. As with our other COPIA projects, we are very keen to have your input. Head for http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/copia.htm.

ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

ARDEN SHAKESPEARE ONLINE
In a remarkable follow-up to its release of the Arden Shakespeare CD-ROM, based on Arden II, Arden have developed an online version using all current editions in the new Arden III series. The numbers are made up by Arden II editions, but these will be replaced as the print editions of Arden III appear. Ardenonline can be previewed for the next few weeks prior to its release in May (at which point your institution will need to pay up, although the service does look to be extremely competitively priced).

Ardenonline provides the complete works of Shakespeare on the World Wide Web, plus introductions (some exclusively written for the resource), commentary and variant notes, performance illustrations and reviews, and more. Full details are available on the website at: http://www.ardenshakespeare.com/ardenonline/.

Access to the preview version itself is by username and password (this is the same for everyone). The details are as follows:

username: preview
password: 4april99

What is there does not in any major respects differ from the printed books, although there are some front-end introductions written specially. The major gain will be evident to anyone who is used to using electronic texts and resources to save time - the texts and the site are fully searchable and everything is linked together hypertextually. Superb use of frames means that the basic page always has text, notes, and contents visible, along with a toolbar at the top. Any frame can be resized or expanded, though the toolbar needs a button to restore the default frames as it is easy to lose access to the table of contents. Most images from the books are included (though some are withheld through copyright problems, including, inexplicably, some facsimiles of quarto pages). The texts are beautifully presented with textual variants flagged up in the margin with a blue 'v' and notes in the commentary with a red 'c'. This gets round a persistent problem in critical editions.

There is a very thorough help page to enable you to make the most of what is, though complex, an elegant and intuitive interface. Each text will have a set of 'resource links', though these only exist for Lear as yet. These offer thematised links to bits of the text and apparatus and a host of images from past performances.

There are doubtless flaws and shortcomings in what is a very ambitious use of hypertext to enhance the reader's use of the excellent Arden editions. Which is why the service is previewing. So have a look, and make your criticisms known.

JSTOR
With parallel sites in the US and UK to which libraries and other institutions can subscribe JSTOR seems to represent the way forward for online journal access.

If your institution subscribes you will be allowed to enter one or the other site. If not, there are links for information at least. The service archives such journals as the Journal of the History of Ideas, Studies in the Renaissance, Renaissance News, Renaissance Quarterly (the amalgam of the previous two), and Shakespeare Quarterly. On their way are the likes of ELH, MLN, Representations, and Yale French Studies. So it offers online access to some really great scholarship from the last 7 decades and not just the latest ejournal rubbish. Pages are digitised, so you can read, quote, and refer to a journal article without concessions. But the database is also powerfully searchable, though not viewable, as plain text, so you can do author/title/keyword searches, view an article, paste its pages into a wordprocessor (an easier way to print off than via the browser in this case), and you have an offprint.

This is digital journal heaven. Part of what is so depressing about BIDS, MLA, etc., is that you can generate hundreds of useful sounding references in a minute, but this just creates more work going to a Library to look at them. JSTOR genuinely saves time and improves the use that can be made of journals.

OUP JOURNALS
OUP have organised a very fine site offering tables and contents for all their journals, along with abstracts and other information where possible. Each journal has its homepage, with tables of contents and the option of subscription to receive new tocs by email. These are listed at: http://www.oup.co.uk/jnls/fields/. Also, there is a single toc subscription page at: http://www.oup.co.uk/jnls/tocmail/. The journals include RES, NQ, Renaissance Studies, Past and Present, and The Library.

EARLY MODERN ENGLAND SOURCE
http://www.quelle.org/emes/emes.html
A site aimed primarily at historians, which some of us dare think ourselves on good days, I know. Seems alarmingly like CERES done in English by Germans with expensive software. That is, it offers a fine and comprehensive site detailing seminars and conferences in the UK, North America, and the Rest of the World; listing online journals and other links of interest; and even offering a direct link to Blackwells online bookshop. The site is searchable and information can be submitted to it direct. Part of a presumably expanding site run by 'QuelleNet' (a mysterious cooperative which manages not to identify whence or by whom it is run). The site has a tendency to play early modern harpsichord music at you without warning. We promise never to do this at CERES.

INTERNETOGRAPHY ON RENAISSANCE INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
http://www.phil-hum-ren.uni-muenchen.de/GGRENirDB/
On the subject of sites like CERES, here is one for intellectual historians. Which, I know, some of us like to think of ourselves as also, on extremely good days. GGRENir is run by Heinrich Kuhn of the Munich Institute for Renaissance Intellectual History. Their homepage is also worth a look: http://www.phil-hum-ren.uni-muenchen.de/default.htm. The internetography contains links to several hundred internet resources of relevance to Renaissance intellectual history. The database is browsable and searchable, and is tightly constructed with separate pages for every item a search might conjure up. Whilst the main focus is on history of philosophy, history of science, history of art, history of literature, history of theology, political history, are covered as well.

THE CLASSICS PAGE
A very useful site, this, from the Ad Fontes Academy in Virginia. Based on a thorough and up to date links page and its own Latin Library of primary texts: http://patriot.net/~lillard/cp/

ENGLISH CALENDAR
This site, run by Ian MacInnes of Albion College, will translate between old and new style dates, or work out on what day of the week a certain date fell. It can also calculate the major dates of the ecclesiastical calendar for a given year, and regnal years: http://www.albion.edu/fac/engl/calendar/.

THE INTERNET RENAISSANCE BAND
In essence, a vast library of Renaissance music in compact midi format (that is, not a recording, but the instructions to your sound card synthesiser, if you have one, to play the notes - the exact modern equivalent of the paper roll for a pianola). http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/emusic/renaissa.html

VALENTINE ARMOURIES
Corny but fascinating site, at which one can view and buy reproduction armour from 500 BC to about 1800. A full suit of Greenwich style armour will set you back $5000 or so. Also features information and links on heraldry, and a fair selection of reasonably priced casual wear for your days off: http://www.varmouries.com.

ESOTERICA: THE JOURNAL OF ESOTERIC STUDIES
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/
Esoterica is a new electronic journal devoted to the study of Western esotericism. Areas of study includes such disparate movements and traditions as alchemy, Freemasonry, the Kabbala, magic, mysticism, and secret or semi-secret orders, as well as these movements' or traditions' impact on artistic, literary, political and social figures.

Esoterica, as an electronic journal and academic resource, has two main goals: providing, on the one hand, illustrated original articles on aspects of esotericism by specialists in the field, and on the other hand, primary research materials of use to scholars and teachers, including links to special collections and archives as well as lists of recent dissertations in the field. The journal also features book reviews and announcements.

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