In a recent conversation with a graduate student friend of mine who is writing about the domestic politics of US Cold War nuclear strategy, we ended up talking about a book he had just bought second-hand. Although the subject-matter of the book, ABM: An Evaluation of the Decision to Deploy an Anti-Ballistic Missile System, edited by Abram Chayes and Jerome B. Wiesner, with Introduction by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (New York: Harper Row, 1969), is pretty far removed from the kinds of things I usually read about for my own research, we stumbled upon what turned out to be a neat little detail inside the volume, which had previously been owned by a college library in California:

As you can see, the stamps in the borrowing slip indicate that the book was a fairly popular loan item until March 1972. After this, it was not borrowed again for eight years, until 1980. To the uninformed reader this evidence of the book’s borrowing history conveys no particular meaning, but my Cold War expert explained that there is in fact significance in these inked dates. In May 1972 the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed between the USA and the Soviet Union. The deployment of an ABM thus became very unlikely, and so interest in books such as this one subsided. In November 1980, however, Ronald Reagan was elected President. He soon began discussions about a renewed arms race, which lead to the announcement in 1983 of a new missile defence plan, dubbed the ‘Star Wars’ initiative. The borrowing slip confirms that interest in this book was revived somewhat during those Reagan years. It tailed off again in the 1990s, and at some subsequent stage the book must have entered the second-hand market after being deaccessioned by the library.

This volume is a serious political document, in which the editors brought together a series of Democrats, all of them either major players in the Kennedy/Johnson administrations, or highly respected scientists, many of whom had also advised the government. Thus the book united technical knowledge about nuclear weapons with political arguments against their deployment, a combination which had not been seen before in such a printed volume. Rushed to press in 1969 by Cass Canfield, a publisher friend of Edward Kennedy, it is furthermore a book which explicitly encourages the individual reader to participate actively in the political debate:

Printed on the inside of the back cover is an invitation for the reader, ‘having read this book’, to make up his or her own mind about the deployment of the ABM system. The coupon may be cut out and sent to Congress via the publisher. Perhaps because this copy was a library book, none of its readers picked up pen and scissors to complete and mail the coupon as directed. There are many other discussions to be had about the significance of this feature of the book. Most importantly however, in the context of the CMT’s activities, this volume reminds us that there is much more to say about both the material and intellectual functions of the book as an artefact around which individuals and institutions interact, especially but not solely in the sphere of political debate.

All the news these days seems to be about libraries closing down, and as an academic I hear more and more of my colleagues saying that they don’t need to go to the library any more. So it was interesting–on a weekend visit–to be confronted by the new £190m ‘Library of Birmingham’, which is due to open next year. The second largest library in the country after the BL, it’s an extraordinary building, sitting proudly alongside the Rep Theatre and Symphony Hall, wrapped in a whimsical lacework that irresistibly draws the gaze. Let’s hope it pulls in the punters too.

Today the Cambridge Digital Humanities Network gathered to hear a presentation on ‘The Evolution of e-Research’ from Dave De Roure, Professor of e-Research in the Oxford e-Research Centre. Truth to tell, I still feel very much an interloper in the e-Research universe. Or perhaps not so much an interloper as someone lowering himself with trepidation into a freezing cold swimming pool. I’ve not quite adjusted to the idea that the humanities academic is going to be useful in future principally as a miner of data rather than as a reader of books. Nor do I hold out much hope that I’ll be able to learn all the acronyms before they become obsolete, in about three weeks’ time.

Today’s most provocative acronym came courtesy of a project called Structural Analysis of Large Amounts of Music Information, or (yes) SALAMI. The aim of SALAMI was to analyse 23,000 hours of digitized music, breaking it down (or slicing it up) into its constituent elements–intros, verses, choruses, bridge passages and outros (sic) for pop music, more complex categories for classical (‘outros’ become ‘codas’). Quite what the ultimate purpose of the exercise was, or what new research has been made possible by it, was a little unclear, although one can certainly imagine that interesting patterns might emerge over time. There are, though, some important senses in which music is not like salami…

A second musical project to which De Roure drew attention has just been launched by the Bodleian library. What’s the Score? invites any musically-literate person to mark up pages from the library’s collections of mid-Victorian piano sheet music, which have hitherto been uncatalogued. First investigations suggest that it’s quite a fiddly operation. It will be interesting to see whether this latest effort at crowd-sourcing reaps results.

In other news, the website of the Cambridge Digital Humanities Network has just gone live–click here to take a look!

A belated happy birthday to William Shakespeare, born 448 years ago yesterday. It seems an opportune moment to draw attention to Radio 4’s ‘Shakespeare’s Restless World’, a 20-part series of short programmes by British Museum Director Neil MacGregor which explores the world of Shakespeare’s first audiences through surviving objects from the period. Riding on the back of certain civic and sporting celebrations happening in the UK this year, Shakespeare is currently enjoying his own season on the BBC and we can look forward to an exhibition, Shakespeare: Staging the World, at the British Museum in the summer, as well as the World Shakespeare Festival.

In last night’s episode of ‘Shakespeare’s Restless World’, MacGregor went to Westminster Abbey to look at some of the tombs and relics of English monarchs which, as today, would have been popular tourist attractions in Shakespeare’s time. Jonathan Bate highlighted the important parallels between visiting the effigy of a famous king (and perhaps listening to a guide translate the Latin inscription on his tomb, telling of his achievements) and seeing Shakespeare’s incarnation of the same hero in action on the Elizabethan stage. I’ll be interested to hear what other material texts feature in this series! The programmes can be found on Radio 4 at 1.45 pm and 7.45 pm on weekdays, but are also available to listen again online.

The Gospel Book of St. Cuthbert is arguably one of the most important surviving medieval manuscripts, and it is a cause for celebration that it has been secured by the British Library in a purchase from the collection of Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. The procurement was funded by a number of major grants of public money as well as many smaller donations from the public at large. It is appropriate, then, that the book has been digitised in full and made available free-of-charge to all on the British Library’s website, as part of a project to inform and educate a broader audience about the book’s importance.

In a world where even relatively recent artworks command multi-million pound auction prices (a version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, up for sale in New York, is expected to fetch around £50 million), the purchase of the Gospels for £9 million seems like quite the bargain. It is an outwardly modest thing – encased in a plain binding of red leather, and measuring at only 14 x 9 cm it is small enough to fit comfortably in one’s hand – yet it stands at the centre of a 1300-year-old story of the life and legend of a northern saint.

Cuthbert was born c.635, and lived his adult life as a monk in various foundations in the north of England, becoming most closely associated with Lindisfarne (where he was prior and later bishop) and Inner Farne (where he spent most of his later life as a hermit until his death on 20th March 687). The Gospel Book that takes his name is of obvious codicological importance: it dates from the late seventh century and is the earliest intact European book in existence, ‘the only surviving high-status manuscript from this crucial period in British history to retain its original appearance, both inside and out’, with the original binding enclosing the text of St. John’s Gospel, likewise unaltered since it was produced.

Yet also, just as in the medieval period, it is the association with St. Cuthbert that lends this book its particular fascination. It was placed in Cuthbert’s tomb at Lindisfarne when it was first opened in 698, and remained alongside the body of the saint until the tomb was opened again at Durham Cathedral Priory in 1104, an event witnessed by the chronicler Symeon of Durham. The book was found, according to a thirteenth-century inscription in the book, ‘near the head of our blessed father Cuthbert lying in his tomb’.

The tomb had been moved out of Lindisfarne in the eighth century, and the body and book together were carried by the community of monks around northern England, then to Chester-le-Street and eventually to Durham. The wanderings of the Gospel Book continued after the destruction of the tomb in the sixteenth century: it was donated to the English Jesuit community at Liège in the eighteenth century, was briefly misplaced while on loan to the Society of Antiquaries in the early nineteenth century, and has eventually come to rest at the British Library (where its new classmark – Add. MS 89000 – scarcely hints at the book’s importance).

When Cuthbert’s tomb was first opened in 698, it was found that ‘the skin had not decayed nor grown old, nor the sinews become dry…but the limbs lay at rest with all the appearance of life’. The incorruptability of a body was crucial evidence in the canonization process, and (whether accurate or not) such accounts are repeated over and again in medieval hagiographies. Holy books, too, were imbued with similar properties of indestructability: according to Symeon, the Lindisfarne Gospels (also at the British Library) were washed overboard during a voyage across the Irish Sea but were found miraculously unharmed on the shore. Few librarians nowadays would be willing to trust the safety of their collections to the intervention of a guardian saint!

It is the vulnerability of manuscripts to damage or destruction that makes the survival of the Gospel Book of St. Cuthbert in such excellent condition so remarkable – dare we say, even miraculous? The historical significance of the book would be no less diminished if it were damaged – but the smoothness of its bindings, the cleanness of its pages and the crispness of its written text cannot but mark it out as exceptional, even though its survival in this state is the outcome of historical chance. To what degree are aesthetic appreciation and scholarly study complementary? Is the Gospel Book of St. Cuthbert powerful as a physical (if not religious) relic of the past because of its unblemished state? In tracing the provenance of a manuscript – like the provenance of a medieval relic – are we seeking more than simple identification and verification? Perhaps a tangible physical connection with the past? Or the privilege of seeing and touching something that is now just as it was more than a millenium ago?

There are many beautiful things to be seen at the British Museum in Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam, a major exhibition focussing on the pilgrimage that every Muslim must make at least once in their life if they are able to, according to the teachings of the Qur’an. It was at the ancient site of Mecca that the Prophet Mohammed received his first revelations in the seventh century, and the Hajj involves rituals in the sanctuary at Mecca, as well as visits to the other holy places of Arafat, Muzdalifa, and Mina. Amongst the manuscripts, maps, photographs and other exhibits  brought together by the British Museum, some of the most exquisite are examples of the textiles that have been used to cover the Ka’ba, the black cube-shaped building at the heart of the sanctuary in Mecca which is believed to have been built by Abraham, and around which pilgrims must walk seven times. The Ka’ba is veiled in the kiswa, a sumptuous cloth heavily embroidered in gold and silver threads with verses from the Qur’an. The kiswa is renewed every year, involving huge labour and expense.  These sacred surfaces covered in dense patterns of calligraphic Arabic are works of great beauty, and this exhibition allows visitors the rare privilege of seeing them in intimate detail.

Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam ends on 15^th April.

We encourage anyone who works on sacred texts and textiles in the Islamic tradition to consider submitting an abstract for a twenty-minute paper at the CMT’s ‘Texts and Textiles’ conference, to be held in Cambridge, 11-12 September 2012. See here for more details.

from John Banville’s review of the 2nd volume of Samuel Beckett’s letters, in the latest New York Review of Books:

“The so-called trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable … are the masterworks of his middle period and surely his most representative achievement in prose. Here at last he found a means of allowing the darkness Krapp had “always struggled to keep under” to spread over the page like so much spilled ink.”

I seem to have been to a feast of digital humanities talks in the last couple of days… At Thursday’s CoDE/CMT seminar, James Wade (Emmanuel, Cambridge) and Peter Stokes (King’s, London) discussed the digitization of medieval manuscripts, with Wade discussing the transmogrifications of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur as it moved from manuscript to print and into twentieth and twenty-first century editions, and Stokes asking what it means to ‘put a manuscript on the web’, given that such an act is literally impossible. Perhaps (he suggested) we need to stop thinking that we are accurately ‘representing’ the manuscript, and instead admit that we’re engaged in acts of modelling, which need to be tailored precisely to our sense of how the digitized materials will be used. For me this raised the question of how much we know about the ways in which people use digital resources–do we really read things online, or do we just raid them? (Or are reading and raiding much the same thing?)

Yesterday lunchtime I just managed to make time for the CRASSH Digital Humanities Network seminar on ‘Using Social Media Data for Research: The Ethical Challenges’. Here Fabian Neuhaus (UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis) and Dr Sharath Srinivasan (Centre of Governance and Human Rights, POLIS) posed some difficult questions about the viability of gathering evidence from tweets or text-messages. The delight of such sources for the researcher is that they provide very precise details that allow you to locate the point of origin of a message; you can map the way in which people are using these media, and you can perhaps begin to tie up particular behaviours and viewpoints with places, times, and social strata (see http://urbantick.blogspot.com/ for more). But this also makes the data–which is difficult to anonymize–very sensitive and open to abuse.  How do you get ‘informed consent’ to use this material for research purposes in the first place? And what do you do when the police (or, in some circumstances, the local dictators) come to your office and ask if they can share your information?

I needed to check something in Andrew Marvell’s ‘Upon Appleton House’, and, not having my volume of Marvell’s poetry to hand, did what any PhD student would do and quickly searched for the poem via Google.  I am used to the sinister phenomenon of Google linking to adverts connected to the content of my emails, and usually ignore them, but this time I was amused by the commentary Google provided on Marvell’s text. While a supplier of ‘artificial grass’ probably wouldn’t be welcomed by Marvell’s speaker, who criticises ‘all this marble crust’, what would he make of the offers of  tree surgeons – ‘for healthier, tidier trees’ and ‘local clearance work’?

Cambridge University Press has just sent me an email offering a 10% discount on selected titles to celebrate World Book Day. I click on the link and get a truly mouthwatering array of bargains. Core Topics in Airway Management heads the list, followed by Diagnostic Techniques in Hematological Malignancies; Morbid Obesity: Peri-Operative Management (down to £54.90!); Brain Repair After Stroke; Depression in Primary Care: Evidence and Practice... I trust that this list has not been targetted to my specific needs as a forty-something male, but I’m not taking any chances: the cake and champagne are going back in the cupboard.