Awesome Archival!

Our Awesome Archival today is a digitization project that allows anyone access to Maimonides's code of Jewish Law. The following excerpt is from Language Hat.

The Bodleian Libraries are the proud custodian of Maimonides' authorized manuscript copy of his major halachic work, the Mishneh Torah, a code meant to collect disparate rulings and to present them "succinctly and clearly, so that all the Oral Torah will be easily accessible to all." ... A later owner of the copy, a certain Eleazar, son of Perahya, stipulated in his will that this and the other volumes of the Code (now lost) should remain in the public domain for consultation....

The manuscript is now as public as it gets. The scan is archival quality, which means you can see scuffs, stains, and so on at a high zoom rate. There are a lot of similar digitization projects taking place all over the world, providing the general population access to documents that until recently have required a great deal of work in terms of access permissions and travel to get to.

Awesome Archival!

This blog is awesome: How to be a Retronaut. It showcases cool historical materials (most recent is Eiffel Tower blueprints) and weird stuff from the past. Very neat.

And in the news: The National Library in India has a Secret Chamber. No one knows what is in the secret chamber, since there is no way to enter it, not even a trap door, but some are predicting skeletons, or maybe even a treasure horde. They're going to bore a hole through the building and see.

Awesome Archival

Anatomy of an Auction by Bonhams.

The first two episodes (the last two videos) are the really interesting once. Provenance is inspected in a number of very rare books recently brought in for auction.

Awesome Archival!

Here's something to watch for:

"The NHPRC and UVA Press will create a new web site which provides access to the fully annotated published papers of key figures in the nation’s Founding era. The project is designed to include the papers of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin...Through this web resource, users will be able to read, browse, and search tens of thousands of documents from the Founding Era."

I am looking forward to seeing how this little (up to $2mil) project is executed. What I would love to see in an online archival site such as the above is something beyond a simple display of materials, even if they do provide 360 degree viewing and 4000x zoom. I'd love to see more curational context (which can sometimes be kind of sparse in websites) AND links to research, published material, and people who have made use of these documents. In other words, a reverse bibliography. How hard could it be? And how fascinating to follow a document from its simple state as a piece of old paper to a piece of some interesting historical puzzle?

If anything, that sort of approach might more immediately illustrate just how useful these materials have been (or how little has been done on them if you find 0 citations!) It would be a good way to advertise the value of archives while at the same time using the power and flexibility of the web to add value to a product, not just make it available.

That's my futurist archives rant for the day.

Awesome Archival!

For this week, the evolution of a service medal, the first presented by the fresh new country of the U.S.A. This is one of the great things about archival; being able to follow the thought process of those who are long dead and gone.

http://www.peterharrington.co.uk/blog/2010/09/libertas-americana/

Awesome Archival!

From the Library of Congress, a reenactment of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Very impressive axework!