Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) updates

Late last week, the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) added three new data sets:

From announcements circulated by CDLI:

Images of nearly all mathematical tablets kept at Jena are now available online through the CDLI database. The images were produced as part of the publication Tablettes mathématiques de la collection Hilprecht (C. Proust with the collaboration of M. Krebernik and J. Oelsner) = TMH 8 (2008), and were batch-processed to CDLI standard format by UCLA staff.

New images of mathematical tablets from Nippur kept at Istanbul have also been added to CDLI. Like the Jena files, the photographs of the Istanbul texts prepared for CD insertion in the publication Tablettes mathematiques de Nippur (C. Proust; 2007) were processed for web at UCLA...

Please see Proust, "Numerical and Metrological Graphemes: From Cuneiform to Transliteration," CDLJ 2009/1, for a description of plans to include, in the standard format of an alliance of online cuneiform projects led by CDLI and ePSD, transliterations of all cuneiform metrological and mathematical texts.

and

The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, in partnership with the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California, is pleased to announce the addition of new digital content to its web offerings.

In March of this year, two UCLA staff members of the project (Brumfield and Heinle) scanned 148 San Jose tablets, and processed the tablet surface images according to CDLI's "fat-cross" standards to complement the SET (Sumerian Economic Texts from the Third Ur Dynasty) publication of Rosicrucian and other US tablet collections published in 1961 by Tom B. Jones and John W. Snyder in transliteration only; collations of the REM tablets in SET were subsequently published by M. Cooper in 1986 (ASJ 8, 309-344) and by J. Carnahan and K. Hillard in 1993 and 1994 (ASJ 15, 246-251; ASJ 16, 310). Bob Englund posted these images to web this week; the entire REM collection can be accessed here.

This digital imaging was supported by a National Leadership Grant for Libraries - Building Digital Resources from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and is part of the on-going mission of CDLI to ensure the long-term preservation of texts inscribed on endangered cuneiform tablets, and to provide free global access to all available text artifact data in furtherance of cuneiform research.

The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) represents the efforts of an international group of Assyriologists, museum curators and historians of science to make available through the internet the form and content of cuneiform tablets dating from the beginning of writing, ca. 3350 BC, until the end of the pre-Christian era. We estimate the number of these documents currently kept in public and private collections to exceed 500,000 exemplars, of which now nearly 225,000 have been catalogued in electronic form by the CDLI.

CDLI also produces a variety of other essential resources.

Three journals

• Cuneiform Digital Library Journal (CDLJ)
  
• Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin (CDLB)
  
• Cuneiform Digital Library Notes (CDLN)

Who's Who in Cuneiform Studies
List of standard abbreviations for Assyriology

and more.

Blog changes

I've made two small changes to the blog over the weekend. If you're reading this in a feed reader or by email you may not see them, so if that's the case, click the link and go AWOL.

In the righthand side bar I now have added the widget delivering the feed from Abzu. Abzu is a partner project to this blog. Not everything that appears here appears there, and vice versa. Abzu's focus is on the ancient Near East and Mediterranan world, and AWOL's focus is the ancient world more broadly conceived. It's easy enough to follow both if you wish to.

Also in the righthand side bar is a form allowing you to receive notifications of updates to AWOL by email. This seems useful for those for whom news feeds are not. Your address will be safe. Neither AWOL nor feedburner will send spam. I have been testing it for some weeks and I'm satisfied that it works reliably.

Access to the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology at JSTOR

[Links updated 27 January 2012]

Having posted a message in May about the availability of ASOR journals at JSTOR, I am informed that a similar arrangement has been made by the Egypt Exploration Society . Members of the society who do not have institutional access to JSTOR can now have access to the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology on JSTOR as an add-on the EES membership. Volumes 1 (1914) - 92 (2006) are currently accessible - there is a five year moving wall.

I can also point you to the EES library catalogue online.

President Barack Obama's visit to Giza in Egypt and Open Access Egyptian Archaeology

Earlier today, as the world knows, President Barack Obama gave an important speech at Cairo University. On this same day, he was given a tour of Giza by the ubiquitous Zahi Hawass. In addition to the usual tour of the pyramids and the Sphinx, he was privileged to visit the tomb of Qar, a small Dynasty 6 subterranean chapel with engaged statuary on the east side of the Great Pyramid. This tomb, numbered G 7101, was excavated in 1924-25 by the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition. As luck would have it this tomb is quite completely documented and published in an open access publication from the Giza Archives project, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:

William Kelly Simpson Giza Mastabas Vol. 2: The Mastabas of Qar and Idu Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1976

Needless to say, luck has nothing at all to do with it. Peter Der Manuelian and his team have been working for years to organize and provide open access to the archaeological record of the excavations at Giza. For the full documentary record, go to the Giza Archives project page and enter "G 7101" in the search box.

Open Access Mandate at University College London

I don't generally remark on institutions adopting Open Access Policies because it isn't really within the scope of this blog, but UCL's announcement today: UCL to implement Open Access policy to all research is interesting for a couple of reasons. First among these is the fact that a publication within Ancient Studies is the most frequently downloaded document at UCL Eprints with nearly three times as many downloads as the runner-up.

Smelik, W. (2001) Sources for manuscripts of Targumic literature in public collections. Selective bibliography: catalogues.

Hard to believe!

Academic Social Network: Academia.edu

Academia.edu

Academia.edu does two things:

• It displays academics around the world in a tree format, according to what university/department they are affiliated with.


• It enables an academic to have an easy-to-maintain academic webpage. A sample page on Academia.edu is here: http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardPrice

Open Access Monographs from Éditions Rue d’Ulm/Presses de l’École normale supérieure

Éditions Rue d’Ulm/Presses de l’École normale supérieure has 47 open access monographs online. The following eight deal with the ancient world.

1.	Armée romaine et provinces I
2.	Armée romaine et provinces II
3.	Cisalpine gauloise du IIIe au Ier siècle avant J.-C. (La)
4.	AUVRAY-ASSAYAS, Clara. Images romaines
5.	AUVRAY-ASSAYAS, Clara; DELATTRE, Daniel. Cicéron et Philodème: La polémique en philosophie
6.	BOUTET, Dominique; HARF-LANCNER, Laurence. Pour une mythologie du Moyen Âge
7.	BRIQUEL, Dominique. Chrétiens et haruspices. La religion étrusque, dernier rempart du paganisme romain
8.	HARF-LANCNER, Laurence. Métamorphose et bestiaire fantastique au Moyen Âge