Acropolis Museum

Interesting preview video of the New Acropolis museum, introduced by chairman Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, from the BBC. [link]

Humanities Scholars and the Electronic Monograph

There's an interesting to and fro going on at the Centre for the Study of Architecture newsletter, about whether electronic monographs are a useful, feasible, achievable, or appropriate means for humanities scholars to publish their research. Discussion between Judith Winters (editor, Internet Archaeology) and Harrison Eiteljorg II (Editor, CSA) in response to an article Harrison Eiteljorg published in CSA called "The Electronic Monograph: A Scholarly Necessity or the Never-Reached
Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow?". [link]

Ending the Empire?

Interesting overview column on who will break Google's monopoly in today's Times. [link]

Misplacing the Domesday Book

A nice animation to round off the week... what would happen if data protection policies were ignored, and the domesday book was lost....

Wills Online

Another addition to the growing amount of genealogical material appearing online - the Origins Network have recently published an index of 28,000 wills from Surrey, England, from the 15th to the 19th Centuries.

An interesting if rather hyperbolic overview appeared in the Guardian, yesterday:

A vivid snapshot of social history, the wills show the importance of small items in less plentiful times: hay, kettles, blankets, butter, bacon, grain and livestock are commonly treasured things passed on to relatives and friends. Everything from a "pair of old stockings" to "gold bodkins" is given away, although wealthier folk list luxuries such as sweetwood boxes and "my best beaver hat". [link]

(The article failed to stress that you had to subscribe (ie pay) to access them. Genealogy is big business, remember). Still, a very interesting collection - and worth a look at the overview to see the range of material available, and free access to some sample highlights which manage to capture some snapshots of thoughts and worries of the time.

Digital Classicist Summer Seminars

Interesting line up just announced for the summer lecture list of work in process papers in the Digital Classicist series. Worth trotting along to Senate House (London) for, of a friday afternoon.
Very friendly crowd, and good discussions tend to follow.

Vintage Patterns

S7659 Gallery
Originally uploaded by sandritocat

Today's random digitised ephemera is from the "Vintage Patterns" pool on Flickr (which has 885 members, 4266 images, so is a pretty impressive archive based on community input).

One of the reasons I love Flickr is the way it encourages groups of interested individuals to pool images of their collections together - creating hundreds of micro online museums/archives, many of which provide detailed and sometimes exhaustive metadata about the type of items which normally go under the institutional radar.

I love not only the history of fashion element to the vintage patterns pool, but the history of graphic art and design.