The Digital Classicist

The first UK Edublogging conference

2006-06-01T16:03:00.000Z

blog.ac.uk

The first UK Educational blogging conference is being held in London on Friday 2nd June.
To quote the publicity:

The first UK educational blogging & web 2.0 conference bringing together practitioner and research based expertise to explore cutting edge issues surrounding the educational use of weblogs and social software.

Sponsored by CETIS, the Centre for Distance Education, University of London, and JISC

http://www.incsub.org/edublog/

Although this is too short notice for anyone wanting to attend, there are plenty of useful links and there will - I am told - be published material available resulting from this conference.

Digital Classicist blog moved

2005-08-03T08:57:00.000Z

In order to integrate resources and better collaborate with one of our partner projects The Digital Classicist blog is moving to The Stoa. You can now find the news blog at: http://www.stoa.org/.

Virtual Theatre Tours

2005-08-01T09:12:00.000Z

The Department of Theatre, Whitman College, is now hosting the The Virtual Reality Theatre Tour site, offering visual tours of ancient theaters via panoramic views from several points of view. While still a work in progress (not all listed theaters are linked to a tour yet), it already offers a series of theatres, particularly from Asia Minor (Aspendos, Aphrodisias, Bodrum, Ephesus, Hierapolis, Miletus, Pergamon and Priene). The individual tours can be accessed by clicking on the appropriate location on a linked map. Each tour is accompanied by details including: information on the location of the theatre; dates of construction and renovation; dimensions; and brief details of excavations. Plans of the theatres, and in some cases reproductions, are also given, and there is a glossary of relevant architectural terms. QuickTime software is required to view the virtual tours.

(Thanks, again, to Humbul Humanities Hub)

Eton Greek Software

2005-07-29T08:20:00.000Z

The Eton Greek Software Project offers now an online language tool for anyone who is learning classical Greek. On offer is a variety of programs which allow the user to test their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary (some require a Java-enabled browser or use Flash). This covers material from the course text 'Reading Greek' (one of the most popular Greek courses in higher education) as well as from AS level and GCSE syllabi. Tests can be customised to suit the user's requirements, according to level of difficulty, English to Greek or vice versa, length of time allowed, or types of words required. There is also an accidence tester designed for practising verb conjugation. A copy of the Eton Greek word list (with translations) for AS level is available to download too; this contains key vocabulary which all Greek learners should know. The testers themselves, however, cannot be accessed via the Project's homepage - the user must first access Eton College's homepage and then enter the site via 'Eton in Action'/'Greek Project'.

(Thanks to the Humbul Humanities Hub)

Wiki Classical Dictionary

2005-07-25T15:51:00.000Z

Seen in Humbul (Classics section)

Main Title :	Wiki classical dictionary (WCD)
Web Address (URL):	http://www.ancientlibrary.com/wcd/
Description :	The Wiki Classical Dictionary (WCD), a project of the website ancientlibrary.com, is an online resource devoted to the history, literature, mythology and archaeology of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. The site (powered by the MediaWiki software) was launched in April 2005, and works like an encyclopaedia to which anyone may contribute, which means that it is constantly evolving. Although the depth of the material currently available varies, the site does maintain scholarly standards and consistency of presentation (editors oversee policies and review articles in their subject areas), making this a useful starting point for anyone looking for information on a particular classical topic. Users may search by keyword, and featured listings are linked to other relevant entries. Many articles also contain links to further resources on the web, as well as details of both primary and secondary source material. The vast scope of the dictionary defies summary, but featured listings include information on: literary authors; historical figures; geographical locations; key events; and characters from mythology and religion. The ambition of the editors is to be for the Oxford Classical Dictionary 'what Wikipedia is to the Encyclopedia Britannica'.
Language :	English
Responsibility :	Editor : Spalding, Tim (The Ancient Library)
Publisher :	The Ancient Library
Copyright :	http://www.ancientlibrary.com/wcd/WCD:Copyrights
Type of Resource :	Reference source Interactive Resource
Humbul Subjects :	Classics

Project Vivarium

2005-07-20T08:43:00.000Z

GU Receives Grant for Resources in the Classics

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a $260,000 grant to Project Vivarium, a collaborative effort of researchers at Georgetown, Harvard, University of Virginia (UVA) and City University of New York (CUNY) aimed at improving resources available in the field of classical studies. The research will focus on developing electronic resources to support scholarship and teaching in the classics.

"The information age offers us the opportunity to build libraries of traditional and digital materials far richer than anything we have known in the past and to make those materials work well with each other,” said Georgetown Provost James J. O'Donnell, the principal investigator and coordinator of the grant. “Classicists have been in the forefront of digital scholarship for forty years and more: this project builds on that heritage and will create tools that the next generation of scholars and teachers and students will benefit from immensely."

The primary goal of Project Vivarium is to create a more unified field of study, providing a clearer view of the evolutionary nature of these classic texts through a more centralized resource for all scholars of the classics. O’Donnell argues that the classics, as a discipline, is most adaptable to these advancements because of the wealth of digital resources currently available in the field, the wide acceptance of digital tools within the community of classicists and the challenge to keep up with technological advancements improving study in other fields.

The grant will help integrate existing print and electronic resources to better serve scholars and students and will support the development of specific resources, including an electronic corpus of Latin texts, an online bibliographical resource, a robust set of protocols for the creation of scholarly text resources and editions and improved access to electronic versions of scholarly journals.

Investigators at all four participating institutions will run this interconnected series of projects. O’Donnell (Georgetown) is joined by Professors Gregory Nagy (Harvard), Bernard Frischer (UVA) and Dee Clayman (CUNY).

The name Project Vivarium comes from a monastery in the early medieval Italy where the collection and indexing of manuscript books represented the most advanced work of its time.

Source: Office of Communications (July 12, 2005)

Humanities Beyond Digitisation

2005-07-08T15:18:00.000Z

Humanities Beyond Digitisation, 20-21 September 2005

This two-day conference, organised by the Institute of Historical
Research, aims to examine the impact of digital resources on research and
scholarship, addressing such questions as preservation, dissemination and
sustainability, information-seeking behaviours, supply and demand, and new
research opportunities (and the new skills that will be required to take
advantage of them).

Speakers include:

Sheila Anderson (Arts and Humanities Data Service)
Professor Philip Esler (Arts and Humanities Research Council)
Professor Mark Greengrass (Sheffield Humanities Research Institute)
Dr David McKitterick (University of Cambridge)
Dr Seamus Ross (University of Glasgow)
Professor Harold Short (King's College London)

Registration is FREE, but places are limited. To register to attend the
conference please contact Frances Bowcock ( ihrpub@sas.ac.uk).

Further information is available at
http://www.history.ac.uk/conferences/computing.html#Hums

PHI press release

2005-07-05T14:24:00.000Z

Thanks to Rogueclassicism:

A press release:

Finding information about ancient Greek inscriptions used to take years of research and countless hours tracking down answers in the library. Through contributions by Case classicist Paul Iversen’s work with the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) Greek Epigraphy Project, classics scholars now can access and search more than 150,000 inscriptions through a comprehensive digitized database in a matter of minutes. Information is currently available in CD-ROM form, but the project will shortly launch a Web site that can be updated regularly as new research surfaces. “Once the web site is available to the public, the search for information on inscriptions will be as short as a blink of the eye,” says Iversen, an assistant professor in the Department of Classics. Iversen said the latest CD-ROM has enough information from books and journal articles about ancient Greek inscriptions that in paper form, the information could fill his third-floor office in Mather House at Case and spill out into the hallways. Those CDs are finding their way into almost every classics department in the country and around the world, according to Iversen, who came to Case in 2001. He can attest to the speed of data-mining inscriptions. While his work is collecting, entering, editing and proofreading inscriptions and related information from established journals and books, every so often something intrigues him. An inscription on a stone fragment found in a private collector of antiquities in Rome was one item. Iversen said it was clear from the numeric system and the script employed on the stone that it had to come from some other region of Magna Graecia. A quick search of the project’s database of ancient recorded writings from 750 BC to approximately AD 500 proved this hunch correct. “Lo and behold, it was part of an inscription of donations during the First Cretan War of ca. 205 to 202 BC on the island of Cos,” said Iversen. He was able to link the fragment to a missing piece of an artifact now in the British Museum. He said someone named Ross published the inscribed donation list in 1845 while the piece was intact in the stairwell of the church of Saint John of Jerusalem on Rhodes. With a search through the PHI database, Iversen tracked the inscription to the island of Cos where it was made and later transported to the church on nearby Rhodes. Eventually the church became a mosque. One day, gunpowder stored in the mosque exploded to shatter the donation list. Most of what remained was given by the Pasha of Rhodes to Prince Edward Albert of Wales, who then donated the damaged inscription to the British Museum in 1873. One of the pieces, however, ended up in Rome. Iversen’s search is one of many searches are leading to new discoveries through the electronic corpus of Greek inscriptions provided by the PHI Greek Epigraphy Project that began 17 years ago as a collaboration between Cornell University and The Ohio State University (OSU). “The PHI disk has revolutionized the way epigraphists do their work,” explains Iversen. PHI was founded and funded by David Packard Jr.—also a classicist and the son of the Hewlett-Packard computer giant. The computer guru’s son saw the potential for digitizing known inscriptions and developed special software and computers called “Ibycus” machines. A new generation of computer software called “Betacode Editor” now enables the project to word process on Macintosh computers and soon they will launch a Web site for wider use for researchers and students with PCs and Macs. Iversen currently is contributing to the project by finding, editing and entering into the database all the known inscriptions on stone, marble, metal and even some ceramic from the regions of Boiotia and the Megarid, which are north and west of Athens respectively. These inscriptions are found on grave markers, at the bases of statuary, on the sides of buildings, on ceramic vessels or even lead or gold leaf message scrolls with prayers or curses left at temples of the oracles or in grave sites. Using a standardized editing system called the Leiden Conventions that reduces inconsistencies in reporting the ancient writings, he inputs the known Greek symbols and places notations where missing words or letters might be. He also reports where the inscription was found and some of the bibliography of earlier research published about the work. “Inscriptions,” Iversen says, “unlike writings on papyrus which are usually copies of copies of copies, come down to us directly with no intervening hand. They are thus original documents. And the PHI project has been pivotal in making sure the texts of these Greek inscriptions survive the jump from printed to digital form to be available for future scholars.” In his first year of studies towards his doctoral degree in classics at OSU in 1989, Iversen took an epigraphy class from Stephen V. Tracy, a world-renowned scholar of Greek epigraphy and the administrator for OSU work with the project. Iversen was hooked. Tracy asked him to join the project. Since 1990, he has contributed on a full- or part-time basis collecting, entering and editing the texts of known inscriptions as a tool for scholars. “While I have logged in many hours on the project over the last 15 years,” Iversen says, “the lion’s share of the work on the project has been done by John Mansfield and Nancy Kelly at Cornell University, and Philip Forsythe at The Ohio State University. They are due the most credit.” The project’s work is one of the first major update of known inscriptions in several regions of Magna Graecia that has taken place since the publication of multi-volume Inscriptiones Graecae series was begun in 1873. By updating the work begun with the Inscriptiones Graecae volume VII in 1892 that covered the regions of Boiotia and the Megarid, the project has almost doubled the corpus of Boiotian and Megarian inscriptions. Iversen has also worked on the material from Thessaly, Epeiros, Illyria, the Upper Danube, Thrace, Moesia Inferior, Scythia Minor, Dacia, the North Black Sea, Rhodes, the Rhodian Peraia, Cos, Cyprus, Aegean Islands, Italy, Sicily and the West. In addition to the PHI project, Iversen teaches Greek and Latin classes, a SAGES (Case’s new undergraduate seminar program Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship) class called “Myth, Ritual & Society in the Ancient World,” other Classics courses, such as“Myth, Hero and Performance in Greek Literature”, an ancient history course called “The Ancient World” and an etymology class for medical students at Case.

Classics Technology Center

2005-07-05T13:25:00.000Z

Recently added to the Humbul database:

http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/

The Classics Technology Center is a website which provides free electronic resources for the teaching and learning of Classics-based subjects. These range from school to university level and cover Greek and Latin languages, ancient history, archaeology and literature, as well as more general material and teaching tools to help with the use of web-based Classics resources. The site includes topic-based tutorials on how to get the most out of the Perseus digital library, and advice on using Perseus in the classroom. Also featured are pedagogical guidelines for teachers of Latin and Greek, and advice from classicists relating to the teaching of a range of topics based on personal teaching experience (themes covered include: classical literature; the Olympics; Alexander the Great; Latin mottoes; Roman gladiators; Plato; Troy; the Greek gods; Latin and Greek languages). There is also a 'showcase' of academic papers on teaching Classics, an extensive glossary of Greek and Latin terms, and a variety of word games and trivia quizzes, including a classical crossword. All items are free to download.

Methods Network deadline extended

2005-07-05T11:40:00.000Z

Job at King’s College, London

AHRC ICT Methods Network Administration Centre Centre for Computing in the
Humanities (CCH) King’s College, London UK

Senior Project Officer: Network Activities and Publications Coordinator.
Fixed term: 32 months (depending on the start date) ALC 3 £30363 - 35883 pa

Applications are invited for a new post in the newly established AHRC ICT
Methods Network Administrative Centre (NAC), based at the Centre for
Computing in the Humanities (CCH), King’s College London. This national
initiative will promote and disseminate the use of ICT in UK arts and
humanities research. The project will build a broadly based collaborative
network of researchers from all humanities and arts disciplines who are
working on the application of computational methods in research in the UK
higher and further education community. In developing a series of
activities and publications, the Network will build new modes of
collaboration and facilitate multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary
work. The work will be coordinated by a Network Administration Centre,
which will provide centralized support for the wide variety of distributed
activities and publications. This centre will be staffed by a manager,
two activities coordinators, and an administrator. The AHRC ICT Methods
Network will run for 3 years from April 2005.

...

Further details about this post, and the Methods Network, can be found at
the project website:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/methnet/
Or by sending e-mail to lorna.Hughes@kcl.ac.uk

Closing date for receipt of completed applications is: 8th August 2005

Propylaea Project

2005-07-04T18:19:00.000Z

From Humbul Classics News; some exciting use of technology here:

The "CSA Propylaea project" concentrates on a single building, the Propylaea, which is at the entrance to the Athenian Acropolis, next to the Parthenon. This is one of the projects of the Center for the Study of Architecture/Archaeology, Bryn Mawr. The Web site makes extensive use of computer aided design (CAD) techniques. In addition to a general introduction and an essential bibliography, the Web site provides access to several pictures accessible through maps. These maps identify the angle at which the pictures were taken; the pictures are grouped accordingly. An ongoing initiative sponsored by the author is searching for old pictures and postcards featuring the same building. These are organised in the same way and are accessible from similar maps. This is especially useful to determine the level of decay of the Acropolis in the last few centuries and may prove helpful for its conservation. The restorers currently working at the site are indeed involved. A CAD model in DWG format is freely downloadable; it requires at least a browser plug-in to translate it to a virtual reality model, but would be most useful to those with previous knowledge of and access to CAD software. A search page is also available. The Web page is incomplete, very much a work in progress, but the approach is original enough and the building a masterpiece of art and architecture.

Greek Transcoder

2005-06-28T13:52:00.000Z

Thanks to the Stoa

GreekTranscoder is a program which converts polytonic Greek characters written using one text encoding into another one. Its primary goal is to allow the conversion of documents using older fonts and encodings into Unicode fonts. However, it also allows converting text between older encodings as well as from Unicode into those obsolete formats.

GreekTranscoder is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Currently GreekTranscoder supports the following legacy encodings:

* Beta Code
* GreekKeys
* Ismini
* LaserGreek
* Paulina Greek
* SGreek
* SPIonic
* SuperGreek
* WinGreek (and Son of WinGreek)

And, of course, GreekTranscoder supports Unicode, using either composed or composing characters. The program lets you choose which option you wish to apply to your Unicode text. It also lets you conform to the TLG usage regarding Unicode “deprecated” codepoints. A Unicode text can be converted into Unicode itself with different conversion settings.

GreekTranscoder is distributed as a Microsoft Word document template.

APIS Funding renewed

2005-06-24T10:46:00.000Z

From Rogueclassicism.

A UMichigan Press release:

The Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS) has been awarded another grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)—this time $370,000 to support the organization's work during the next two years, bringing the NEH's decade of support for APIS to more than $1.6 million. Since 2000, the University of Michigan's efforts have brought the international project to the forefront of research. There are 13 APIS partners in the U.S. and 15 in Europe, including the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. The U.S. partners will now have this new grant to support their work during the next two years. "The generous support of the NEH for nearly 10 years has made it possible to complete work on several collections in North America, many of which were neglected for several decades and were in dire need of conservation," said Traianos Gagos, U-M associate professor of papyrology and Greek and head archivist of U-M's papyrology collection. "We hope that by 2007, all notable collections on this part of the Atlantic will be available to scholars and students worldwide. Even after 2007, work will continue on the very large collections at Berkeley and the University of Michigan, which are currently cataloging and digitizing unpublished papyri, that is, texts that so far have not been accessible to scholars outside these institutions," Gagos said. Through the use of modern information technology, this virtual library of papyrological collections at http://www.lib.umich.edu/pap/ has been attracting more non-specialists to the most ancient of communications media—papyrus—making APIS a model to be followed. APIS makes it possible for viewers to explore digital images of ancient papyrus and examine detailed library catalog records about the material. Found among the U-M collection is a letter from a Greek husband to his wife. "So when you have received this letter of mine," he wrote, "make your preparations in order that you may come at once if I send for you. And when you come, bring 10 shearings of wool, six jars of olives, four jars of liquid honey, and my shield, the new one only, and my helmet. Bring also my lances. Bring also the fitting of the tent. If you find the opportunity, come here with good men. Let Nonnos come with you. Bring all our clothes when you come. When you come, bring your gold ornaments, but do not wear them on the boat." The APIS database contains more than 20,000 records, about 3,400 of them from the U-M collection. Columbia University is the technological host for APIS, offering access to the database at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/projects/digital/apis/search/.

ESRI supply GIS tools for Big Roman Dig

2005-06-15T10:18:00.000Z

(spotted on Rogue Classicism)

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/B/bigromandig/index.jsp

From 26 June to 16 July this year Time Team are hoping you will join them in the most ambitious exploration of Roman Britain ever – not just one fort, villa or even city, but the whole country – Time Team's Big Roman Dig.

The nine key digs that tell the story of Roman Britain have now been chosen and you can apply to join the team here. Plus find out about the most important location of the Big Roman Dig, the site at Dinnington.

Big Roman Dig will be working with the private company, ESRI (UK), one of the most experienced providers of enterprise geographic information systems (GIS) in the UK. As well as providing GIS technology and supporting applications, ESRI (UK) will be seconding consultants to work onsite with the production team to develop the technology in line with the changing requirements of the programme.

The team will be using a range of ESRI software including:

• ArcIMS
• ArcPad
• ArcGIS ArcView
• ArcGIS 3D Analyst with ArcGlobe
• MapsDirect hosted mapping services

For further information on GIS for Archaeology, visit http://www.esri.com/ industries/archaeology/index.html

Postdoc in Humanities Computing

2005-06-14T17:56:00.000Z

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v19/0094.html

A new one year, fixed-term appointment will become available July 1st, 2005, for a suitably qualified Post-Doctoral Researcher to work with the University of Victoria's Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) Project, based in the Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC) at the University of Victoria.

About TAPoR: TAPoR is building a unique human and computing infrastructure for text analysis across the country by establishing six regional centers (UMcMaster, UMontreal, UAlberta, UNew Brunswick, UToronto, and UVictoria) to form one national text analysis research portal. This portal will be a gateway to tools for sophisticated analysis and retrieval, along with representative texts for experimentation. The local centers will include text research laboratories with best-of-breed software and full-text servers that are coordinated into a vertical portal for the study of electronic texts. Each center will be integrated into its local research culture and, thus, some variation will exist from center to center.

TAPoR at the University of Victoria's HCMC has a multimedia laboratory and server infrastructure suitable for research into a variety of areas of Humanities Computing, including multimedia enrichment and acquisition, text representation and text analysis. UVic's newly appointed CRC Chair in Humanities Computing, and our resident computing experts, provide guidance and expertise to the 8+ TAPoR-related research projects currently under development. To learn more about UVic people and projects, see http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/tapor/index.htm.

Open Source SVG Editor

2005-06-14T17:54:00.000Z

(Seen on Creative Commons Blog)

http://www.inkscape.org/

Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG). Some supported SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape supports Creative Commons meta-data, node-editing, layers, complex path operations, text-on-path, and SVG XML editing. It also imports several formats like EPS, Postscript, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.

Inkscape's main motivation is to provide the Open Source community with a fully W3C compliant XML, SVG, and CSS2 drawing tool. Additional planned work includes conversion of the codebase from C/Gtk to C++/Gtkmm, emphasizing a lightweight core with powerful features added through an extension mechanism, and the establishment of a friendly, open, community-oriented development process.

Arts and Humanities Research Gets Technical

2005-06-10T01:36:00.000Z

AHRC News & Press Releases

Researchers in the arts and humanities are set to get technical thanks to a new scheme from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Just under £1m is being awarded to support projects that will not only survey the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) activities and needs of arts and humanities researchers, but will also develop tools and resources specifically relevant to the AHRC's subject domains.

With increasing amounts of research carried out and disseminated online, it is ever more important to ensure that arts and humanities researchers have the same opportunities as academics working in the fields of science and technology. The AHRC's Strategic Initiative on ICT in Arts and Humanities research was developed in 2003 in a bid to improve these opportunities.

Bodley to digitise 1 000 000 books

2005-06-06T19:20:00.000Z

From the Friends of the Bodleian news

After more than a year of discussions and negotiations, the University of Oxford has concluded a mass-digitisation agreement with Google, Inc., of Mountain View, California, which should lead, over the next three years in the first instance, to the digitisation of more than 1 million of the Bodleian Library's printed books, and their worldwide availability on the Internet, through Google's popular search services and the Oxford website.

Because of copyright restrictions and intellectual property issues, the agreement between Google and Oxford covers only 'public domain' materials (i.e. printed books for which the copyright has expired - principally, books published before 1920), and it will involve the establishment in Oxford, by Google, of a digital scanning and processing unit which, when fully operational, should be capable of producing as many as 10,000 electronic books per week.

The scanning operation will lead to the creation of two digital copies of each book: one for Google, and one for Oxford. The Google copy will be fully indexed and searchable through the Google search service, while the Oxford copy will be linked directly to the relevant catalogue record in the Oxford Libraries Information Service (OLIS). For Google, this will represent a major enhancement of the quality and range of the information discovered and presented by its Internet-based services. In Oxford, the addition of so many electronic books, from the University's own collections, to its web-based library resources will not only provide a major increment in library service for users, but will also represent a significant step forward in the long-term aims of the Oxford University Library Services (OULS) in developing a 'virtual library' based on its incomparable physical collections.

More: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/news/news58.htm

Digital Classicist born!

2005-05-25T10:51:00.000Z

We have created The Digital Classicist (pronounced /dijklas/) for future blogs on issues relating to computing and classical studies/ancient history. Besides this blog, The Digital Classicist will also have a Wiki and a website.

Watch this space for more information.