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And art thou borne, brave Babe? Blest be thy birth! |
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to our latest Harvest, somewhat later in the year than it might
have been, but then the weather has rather failed to live up to
expectations this summer. Highlights include some major new library
catalogues, most notably the British Library's Manuscripts Collection, and
a further look at Early English Books Online. Shorter features come first
below, with the more extensive reviews bringing up the rear. Our links
page, at http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/links.htm, has been updated to
include some of the best of our recent finds, and remember that all past
issues of Harvest are archived and searchable at http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/archive.htm.
FOLGER LIBRARY CATALOGUE GOES ONLINE
http://shakespeare.folger.edu/
Less exciting than it sounds, this does not include manuscript materials,
and so far covers less than 10% of the rare book collections. It does,
though, include all copies of the four Shakespeare folio editions published
between 1623 and 1685; promptbooks; all incunabula; and accession records
for all rare materials acquired since 1996. And it is anticipated that
before the year is out around 50,000 records describing Folger STC
(1475-1640), Wing (1641-1700), and eighteenth-century holdings will be
uploaded. In the meantime, you can find if an early book is in the Folger
by looking for it at ESTC (see the CERES links page, and our reviews of
that service in Harvest).
OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY ONLINE
This speaks for itself. Far superior in appearance and interface to the OED
on CD-ROM, this new service will also find search results more quickly with
some forms of connection. Because it is an indispensable tool it comes at a
cost. If your institution subscribes, access will probably be via
http://dictionary.oed.com/. Click on 'sign in' and see if you are turned away. The same front door is presented at http://oed.com/.
BIDS ISI RIP
The BIDS ISI data service, which has been running at the University of
Bath since February 1991, will close on Monday 31st July 2000.
The replacement service, which accesses an identical copy of the data through a different interface, is known as Web of Science. It has been developed and is maintained by ISI, and the contract to operate the system delivering the service has been awarded by the JISC to MIMAS at the University of Manchester. This service is available now at http://wos.mimas.ac.uk and supports the same ATHENS usernames and passwords as the BIDS ISI service.
The interface has some differences but seems to function well. One major loss is the BIDS AutoJournals facility, which emails users with the tables of contents of their own list of journals. There is currently no equivalent to this in Web of Science, although many publishers (OUP for one at http://www3.oup.co.uk/jnls/tocmail/) offer such a service for their own journals.
HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION
http://www.hmc.gov.uk/
Beneath the upper levels of the HMC web pages lurks, miraculously, a
complete listing of the HMC reports and calendars. Also recently enhanced
is ARCHON, a database of information about archives which supplements the
National Register of Archives.
http://www.hmc.gov.uk/pubs/rep&cal.htm
http://www.hmc.gov.uk/archon/archon.htm
http://www.hmc.gov.uk/nra/nra2.htm
THE EDMUND SPENSER HOME PAGE
Following a brief mention in the last issue, the exponential growth of this
new site earns a second notice. Constructed and maintained by CERES' own
Andrew Zurcher, the site replaces Richard Bear's Spenser home page. It
offers a pretty vast array, including full biography, bibliography, and
listing of electronic texts, as well as hosting the pages of the new
Spenser discussion list, the Spenser Society, and the journal Spenser
Studies. This last set of pages includes a comprehensive listing of
contents for volumes 1-14, complete with abstracts. I won't go on, for fear
of accusations of exchanging our proper oaten reed for some stern trumpet
blowing. But do have a look at http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenser/.
THE SIDNEY HOMEPAGE
Rather further behind in the CERES offshoots trail of glory is the new
Sidney homepage, which aims to focus the on and offline study of Philip
Sidney, Robert Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke, and Mary Wroth. The site
is still under construction, but already includes information on the Sidney
Society and its conferences, and tables of contents for the Sidney Journal.
Hope for more at http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/sidney/.
THE MILTON READING ROOM
http://www.dartmouth.edu/research/milton/reading_room/
An impressive site, clearly designed to educate students, and
enthusiastically built on the premise that 'Milton...should be read and
studied from inside a library, and the web makes this possible on a scale
only recently imagined'. The work of Thomas Luxon and his students, this
offers all the major poetry (including all the Latin works with
translations) and a good selection of the prose. The texts are presented in
old spelling editions which, because of comprehensive inclusion of
preliminaries and reproduction of title page layout, amount to online type
facsimiles. With the surprising addition of hypertext links to a helpful
commentary which appears at the foot of the page, this makes for an
attractive and challenging version of Milton online. Incomplete in some
areas and ambitious for expansion in others, this is a highly promising
resource.
EARLY MODERN CULTURE: AN ELECTRONIC SEMINAR
http://eserver.org/emc/
An ambitious and well-conceived attempt to set up 'an on-line space for
something like the active and on-going inquiry of a good seminar'. The
first issue offers 'four works-in-progress by major scholars in early
modern studies, along with a set of responses from readers - some junior,
some senior - working on similar topics' and aims to start up further
conversations. The advantages for scholars of this opportunity to present
drafts of future publications are easy to see, and by soliciting responses
the editors ensure that some dialogue takes place, even if, as so often
with such projects, Joe Academic stays largely silent.
THE PERDITA PROJECT
http://human.ntu.ac.uk/perdita/
This project, already fairly well-known, is producing a database of
descriptive and contextual information for about 400 early modern
manuscripts written or compiled by women. Apart from offering information
about the project and seminars it sponsors, the site tantalises with some
specimen entries, well worth a look for a taste of what is to come.
THE SHAKESPEARE INSTITUTE LIBRARY
http://www.is.bham.ac.uk/shakespeare
Another good site for keeping abreast of Shakespeariana. Aside from
information about the Institute and Library, this offers a comprehensive
listing of 'Current and Forthcoming Shakespeare Productions in the UK'.
THE TUDOR SYMPOSIUM
An informal research forum for scholars working in sixteenth-century
English literature and related areas, the Tudor Symposium sponsors a
biennial conference (the next is in September) and publishes an online
register of members and their research interests (membership is free):
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/english/tudor_members.htm
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/english/tudor_conference_2000.htm.
METAPHYSICALPOETRY.ORG
http://www.metaphysicalpoetry.org
Maintained by Gregory Kneidel of Texas Christian University,
metaphysicalpoetry.org is 'an annotated bibliography of web resources for
studying, teaching, and appreciating seventeenth-century metaphysical
poetry'. It has pages devoted to authors - Donne, Herbert, Cowley, Vaughan,
and 'minor' others (which, oddly, includes Marvell) - and to 'Teaching and
Research', in other words background information and criticism. The
well-organised fruits of some well-organised browsing, this site offers a
great many links, many familiar, some new, some even worth coming across.
EARLY MODERN LITERARY STUDIES LATEST
http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlshome.html
The new issue of EMLS, 6.1, is devoted to Shakespeare on Screen. Other
areas continue to grow, with a now substantial set of reviews of electronic
resources offered in the interactive EMLS section.
MORE FROM RENASCENCE EDITIONS
One of our favourite sites continues to thrive. New additions include
electronic texts of Gosson's Schoole of Abuse (1579) and the somewhat
Spenserian poet Richard Niccols's The Beggers Ape (1607). URLs:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/gosson1.html
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/ape.html
BRITISH LIBRARY MANUSCRIPTS ONLINE CATALOGUE (MOLCAT)
http://molcat.bl.uk
Your lottery money has been hard at work bringing the British Library
Manuscripts catalogue into the modern age. Using the Manuscripts Online
Catalogue (MOLCAT), it is now possible to conduct a remote search of
selected indexes and descriptions of various classes of manuscripts held at
the BL. It is also possible to retrieve index records or a description
relating to a particular manuscript.
The search facility is spare and sensible, allowing searches by name (person, location, corporate body), additional name, and other index entry. Searches can be further limited by start and end years, language, and state. The standard range of boolean expressions is allowed, including 'and', 'or', and 'near'. Further search options include use of the '*' option for part-word searching, and a set of buttons enabling and disabling word-only and start-of-word searching. One of the best features of MOLCAT - in contrast to, for example, the Public Record Office search facility - is its spare use of graphics. Navigating around the site is fast and responsive.
As usual with new internet launches, the online catalogue is incomplete and very much a work in progress. As the editors note in their disclaimer (see http://molcat.bl.uk/msscat/MSSRETRO.ASP), MOLCAT is intended to offer a single means of access to the Library's 'mainstream' manuscript catalogues - many specialist catalogues are still only available in paper form in the Library itself. Furthermore, most of the work was done by text-recognition computer scanning of the paper catalogues, which means that the online version is subject to the same historical changes in cataloguing standards that vex the paper catalogues. In some classes of manuscript, index records for the manuscripts are available where descriptions are not, while the reverse is true in others (the disclaimer details the current status of various manuscript collections). This is by far the most serious concern, as important collections are not included in one or another type of search - a fact most obvious when trying unsuccessfully to locate index records or a description for a particular (known) manuscript belonging to a collection where one or the other type of information is not yet available. Further updates, additions, and enhancements are promised, though the editors intend to concentrate for now on filling gaps in coverage.
There is no denying that MOLCAT is an important new service for the scholarly community, but it should be used with caution. Searchability in a text is only as good as the text itself, and the catalogues have a long way to go before they can be reliably trusted to yield fair responses. On the other hand, the ease of using MOLCAT is enticing, and even imperfect remote use of the catalogues is better than no remote use at all. The future is brighter.
EARLY ENGLISH BOOKS ONLINE REVISITED
http://wwwlib.umi.com/eebo/
[A supplement to our review in Harvest 4.3]
EEBO has made great progress since our last review. More and more of the
old UMI microfilms have now been scanned in, so that one tends no longer to
find that an item is not yet available. To all intents and purposes this
now is the complete digital collection of the books listed in STC and Wing.
Teething troubles remain (see below) but the service has already changed
the way we work.
One feature of EEBO which we somehow neglected to applaud in our first review is the one which packages up a complete file of your chosen book for downloading in Adobe Acrobat format. This is a timesaving alternative to viewing, or printing off, page by page using the DJVU plugin. Adobe Acrobat is a viewer, rather like a web browser, and EEBO will direct you to a download site if you don't already have it on your computer. (If you do, it may not be the latest version, 4, and you may, as I did, have an afternoon of PC meltdown in store before you realise what the problem is). After searching, click to mark with a tick the book(s) you want. Then click on 'marked list' and you will be offered a full citation and the option - again click to select - of downloading all or a range of the book's scanned pages. On the next page you must enter your email address, so that EEBO can email you when the book is ready for downloading (this takes anything from a minute to half an hour). On the next page, you are given a temporary PIN number (right click to copy) and a link to ANOTHER page. Go there and enter the PIN (right click to paste) [and I do apologise to Mac users without right mouse buttons, as well as to sinistral PC users I suppose]. Click 'submit' and you get to a final page, which you can also reach via the link sent to you by email as notification that your order is being processed. This final page gives your order details, and is reloaded every minute until (and once) the file is ready, when the details turn into a hyperlink.
But before you click to download, a word of caution. Some files are as large as 50 megabytes. And at some times of the day heavy internet traffic causes problems, not least long download times. These are all reasons why something may go wrong, probably with your computer but occasionally at the other end. Whenever I download from EEBO I expect a crash. I try to avoid this by enlarging and emptying my browser cache (deleting everything that has piled up in \windows\temporary internet files and making the cache at least twice as large as the file to be downloaded). [Obviously I am again offending Mac users, but I doubt their machines crash, so they ought just to be happy.] By freeing up space in this way, I hope that my computer will get less confused when Windows tries to put copies of the download into temporary directories. Another thing I do is not click on the link to open the file straightaway, but save it to disk (by right clicking). A third thing I may do is close other open applications, including, after right clicking on the link to start the save process, my browser, since that is still trying to reload the download page every minute.
These cautions over, we can download our gleaming virtual early modern book and save it somewhere knowing that after a few years spent sweating in front of the computer it will be possible to do all our research on the beach with a laptop and a private archive of CDs. Or will it? The worst thing about this, the best of online services, is that sometimes a page blanks out half way down. Acrobat reader tells you 'read less image data than expected', because the problem is either with the file as EEBO sent it to you, or with the file as it emerged at the other end of the web. All you can do is go through the process again, and hope that this time it works. When it does, the results are satisfying. But be prepared for some occasional frustration.
WORLD SHAKESPEARE BIBLIOGRAPHY ONLINE
Edited by James L. Harner, this release of The World Shakespeare
Bibliography Online provides annotated entries for all important books,
articles, book reviews, dissertations, theatrical productions, reviews of
productions, audiovisual materials, electronic media, and other scholarly
and popular materials related to Shakespeare and published or produced
between 1977 and 1998.
Published by The Arden Shakespeare in association with The Folger
Shakespeare Library, WSB Online has been inaugurated with a one month open
trial period. The site may be accessed at http://www.worldshakesbib.com
using the following:
Username: shakelib
Password: trialbiblio
The single institutional price for one year is $200. Personal subscriptions
are also available for $50 and a 50% discount is available to Shakespeare
Quarterly personal subscribers.
The boolean searching is powerful but in some ways inappropriate to the nature of the material. The 'help' is colourful to look at but doesn't tell you precisely how to locate entries which share, say, an author. Searching the advanced search under 'author' with 'Frank Kermode' finds nothing. Searching with 'Kermode, Frank' finds mostly things by other people called Frank, with relevancy scores, but not presented in order of relevance. But, mirabile dictu, searching 'Frank and Kermode' will get everything by Kermode, as will searching 'Kermode Frank'. While 'Frank near Kermode' yields nothing. Bad job. Oh, and since book reviews are entered in the database as a list appended to the entry for the book reviewed, one must search 'keywords' to find reviews written by Kermode Frank. Perhaps my intuitions are awry, but this seems a particularly unintuitive dataset and interface.
WATERMARKS
A number of sites are constructing databases of watermarks, not, as with
Briquet, Heawood, et al., using tracings but for the most part reproducing
either beta-radiographs or images produced using the more recent technique
of fluorescent light and Dylux paper. A good example, though German and
focussing on mediaeval material, is WZMA (Wasserzeichen des Mittelalters)
at http://www.oeaw.ac.at/~ksbm/wz/wwwdb/.
Another impressive collection is Le filigrane degli archivi genovesi at
http://linux.lettere.unige.it/briquet/.
But the number one choice is the online version of the Thomas Gravell collection of watermarks held at the University of Delaware Library (that collection is described at http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/gravell.htm). The work of Daniel Mosser and Ernest W. Sullivan II, the database includes digital images of photographic reproductions of over 6,500 watermarks in paper made between 1400 and 1835 and is sponsored by, among others, the Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities (CATH) at Virginia Tech, on whose web-database server the service is mounted: http://128.173.125.124:591/DBs/Gravell/
This is very much a work in progress (only 500 entries so far), but in time looks to become a very valuable resource. The site includes links to other relevant sites, at http://128.173.125.124:591/DBs/Gravell/library.html, including directions on how to subscribe to the Watermarks Discussion List, based at Virginia Tech, and archived at http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/mailopen/watermarks/.
Also worth a look is 'The Watermark Initiative', a project which aims 'to arrive at standards for the design and function of World Wide Web based Archives of Papers and Watermarks'. It is based at http://www.bates.edu/Faculty/wmarchive/wm-initiative/ and is an offshoot of the Archive of Papers and Watermarks in Greek Manuscripts at http://www.bates.edu/Faculty/wmarchive/. Perhaps more relevant to CERES users is David Gants's site 'A Digital Catalogue of Watermarks and Type Ornaments Used by William Stansby in the Printing of The Workes of Benjamin Jonson', at http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/gants/.
For more bibliographical links, try HoBo, our next-door neighbours, at http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/hobo/bkres.html, or SHARP at http://www.indiana.edu/~sharp/.
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For further information on CERES, please write to Gavin Alexander or Raphael Lyne.
This page is maintained by Andrew Zurcher, and was last updated on
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