Thursday, January 29, 2009

New Ancient World Content in JSTOR

Anthropological Linguistics (Arts & Sciences VI)
Release Content:
Vol. 1, No. 1 (January, 1959) – Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter, 2004)
Moving Wall: 2 years
Publisher: The Trustees of Indiana University on behalf of Anthropological Linguistics
ISSN: 0003-5483
Note: The content for 2005-2006 will be released as soon as the issues become available to JSTOR


Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Supplementary Studies (Arts & Sciences Complement)
Release Content:
Nos. 1 – 27 (1945 – 1991)
Publication of this title ceased in 1991.
Publisher: The American Schools of Oriental Research
ISSN: 0145-3661


Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt (Arts & Sciences V)
Release Content:
Vols. 1 – 40 (1962 - 2003)
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: American Research Center in Egypt
ISSN: 0065-9991


Moving Wall Reductions

Latin American Antiquity (Arts & Sciences Complement)
Release Content: Vol. 16, No. 1 (March, 2005) - Vol. 17, No. 4 (December, 2006)
Moving Wall: 2 years
Publisher: Society for American Archaeology
ISSN: 1045-6635
Note: By publisher request, JSTOR is decreasing the moving wall from 3 years to 2 years.


Transactions of the American Philological Association (Arts & Sciences II)
Release Content: Vol. 132, No. 1/2 (Autumn, 2002) - Vol. 133, No. 2 (Autumn, 2003)
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ISSN: 0360-5949
Note: By publisher request, JSTOR is reducing the moving wall from fixed to 5 years.
Note: The content for 2001 will be released as soon as the issues become available to JSTOR.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Another interesting and promising collaboration

JSTOR and Ithaka are merging under the name Ithaka
The new combined enterprise will be called Ithaka and will be dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to advance scholarship and teaching and to reducing system-wide costs through collective action.

This is a natural step for these organizations. JSTOR and Ithaka already work closely together, sharing a common history, values, and fundamental purpose. During 2008, the Ithaka-incubated resource Aluka was integrated into JSTOR as an initial step, further strengthening ties between the organizations. JSTOR will now join Portico and NITLE as a coordinated set of offerings made available under the Ithaka organizational name.

As one organization, Ithaka will explore how to use its combined knowledge and experience to help its constituents in new ways. “The academic community has invested significantly in the important set of services that we manage and, together, they represent core elements of the networked digital infrastructure needed to support scholarship, research, and teaching. Increasingly we are approached for help on a range of initiatives that seek to leverage this investment and that we think will benefit from stronger coordination across all our areas of expertise and activity,” said Guthrie. “We are very excited about the potential to work with our constituents in even more useful innovative ways through this combination.”

The organization will also remain steadfastly committed to enabling institutions to maximize the benefits they provide to scholars and students while containing expenses. Michael Spinella, Executive Director of JSTOR and now Executive Vice President of Ithaka added, “JSTOR and Ithaka have a history of helping academic institutions by building and managing collectively-supported large-scale resources with an aim of developing sustainable models that deliver greater value than institutions could achieve alone. Now is the time when we can work even more closely together to develop and sustain the kinds of shared solutions that will be vital to the success of educational institutions in the future.”

In addition to JSTOR, Portico, and NITLE, Ithaka’s existing research and strategic services groups will remain important parts of the enterprise. The board will be composed of Ithaka and JSTOR Trustees, with Henry Bienen, President of Northwestern University, serving as Chairman and Paul Brest, President of the Hewlett Foundation as Vice Chairman.


About JSTOR

JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the scholarly community discover, use, and build upon a wide range of intellectual content in a trusted digital archive. The JSTOR archive includes over 800 leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as conference proceedings, transactions, select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. More than 5,200 academic and other institutions in 143 countries and over 600 learned societies, university presses, cultural heritage, and other content contributors participate in JSTOR. Since the public launch of the archive, over 750 million articles and other items have been accessed by researchers and students throughout the world.

About Ithaka

Ithaka is an independent not-for-profit organization with a mission to accelerate the productive uses of information technologies for the benefit of higher education worldwide. Ithaka provides research, strategic, and administrative services to promising not-for-profit projects, helping them to develop sustainable organizational and business models. It also works with established institutions that are rethinking the way they serve their core constituents. Ithaka includes Portico a digital preservation archive to which more than 8,200 e-journals and 4,600 e-books are committed, and NITLE, a suite of services supporting the innovative use of technology in liberal arts education.

This is going to be interesting to watch

An interesting and promising collaboration

The eJournal portals Persée and Revues.org are collaborating to provide full-text searching of both sites. Persée serves digitized backfiles, and Revues.org hosts recent issues.

The initial suite of journals includes:

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

ACLS Humanities E-Book update

The new HEB News (Vol. 3, No. 1) has just been released and will be available shortly at the link below.

This issue announces publication of a new HEB White Paper on XML Conversion. Announces it but doesn't yet give a link. Hmmm...

It also introduces new viewing options for the books on the HEB site and a new title-list format.

And last, but not least, it announces 500 new titles added to the HEB site in December 2008. But it doesn't seem to specify what they are. Hmmm...

All issues of HEB News can also be downloaded here

New OI publication online

I have updated AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 2: The Oriental Institute Electronic Publications Initiative, with the addition of

Monday, January 26, 2009

New online journals

New, or newly discovered, online journals:

Orientalia Parthenopea Journal
A group of young researchers who completed their studies within the milieu of the Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” or carried out their post-graduate research work in the same university started the publication of Orientalia Parthenopea Journal in June 2005. The journal collects essays on Eastern Cultures from Eastern Europe to Far East Asia and Comparative Studies.The editorial board of Orientalia Parthenopea reserves for itself the right to use experienced national or even international referees to evaluate the quality of the articles. Among our referees figure the following scholars: Giorgio Amitrano, Michaela Böhmig, Gianluca Coci, Riccardo Contini, Lorenzo Declich, Francesco De Sio Lazzari, Amedeo Di Francesco, Salvatore Diglio, Gennaro Gervasio, Hayashida Kenzo, Giancarlo Lacerenza, Amedeo Maiello, Luigia Melillo, Shyam Manohar Pandey, Adriano Rossi, Domenico Silvestri, Adolfo Tamburello, Giovanni Verardi.All scholars for whom qualitative research methodology are basic perspectives of orientalistic disciplines, are welcomed to submit their articles and support our initiative. There will be published empirical, theoretical and methodological articles applicable to all fields and specializations within orientalistic disciplines.Subject CoverageTopics include, but are not limited to, the following:History, Archeology, Art, Medicine, Linguistics, Literature, Comparative Studies, Philosophy, Religion, etc.


I Quaderni del Ramo d'Oro
"I Quaderni del Ramo d'Oro on-line" costituiscono la rivista del Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Antropologici sulla Cultura Antica (Università di Siena).Iscritti nel Registro Periodici del Tribunale di Siena (l'ISSN è in corso di attribuzione) e di consultazione libera e gratuita, "I Quaderni del Ramo d'Oro on-line" pubblicano contributi previa valutazione da parte del Comitato Scientifico.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Open access promotes sales

This is interesting. 23,000 % increase in sales after open access is granted?


Granted it's Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, &c. but still, two of their films were about the ancient world (more or less): Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), and they engaged archaology from time to time: Archaeology Today; and enjoyed a sophisticated argument; and poked fun at the academy at home and abroad - not too different from lots of people I know. In any case a 23,000 % increase in sales after granting open access is a nice benchmark.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Oriental Institute Research Archives Catalogue Online

The online catalogue of the Oriental Institute Research Archives contains entries for materials catalogued in the library since 1987, and complete analytics (essays, articles and book reviews) for materials catalogued since 1990. The catalogue also includes earlier materials, and retrospective cataloguing of the entire collection will ultimately make all Research Archives materials accessible. At present, the Research Archives on-line catalogue contains well over two hundred thousand entries, searchable through a library database program.



It is an excellent source of bibliographical data for ancient Near Eastern studies

Wilbour Library Catalog Online

Wilbour Library, Brooklyn Museum of Art: Online Catalog has a new interface, a component of Arcade, the catalog for the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC).



The Wilbour Library catalogue is an excellent source of bibliographical information on Ancient Egypt.

ETANA in the news

ETANA is the American Library Association's Digital Library of the Week.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

International Conference on Geoarchaeology & Archaeomineralogy

International Conference on Geoarchaeology & Archaeomineralogy 29-30 October 2008 - Sofia Bulgaria


  1. Should archaeomineralogy now follow geoarchaeology into the family of organized scholarly fields? - George (Rip) Rapp

  2. Earth sciences and culture: natural and cultural heritage in the International Year of Planet Earth - Ivan Zagorchev

  3. Stone raw materials as indicators of human contact during the Stone Age - Maciej Pawlikowski

  4. The rock shelter Arkata, Eastern Rhodopes: preliminary archaeological report - Maria Gurova, Stefanka Ivanova

  5. Formal Early Neolithic flint toolkits: archaeological and sedimentological aspects - Maria Gurova, Chavdar Nachev

  6. Regarding the procurement of lithic materials at the Neolithic site at Limba (Alba County, Romania (sources of local and imported materials - Otis N. Crandell

  7. Quarry sources of stone implements from the Azmak Tell near Stara Zagora (South Bulgaria) - Victoria Stoyanova, Kuncho Kunchev

  8. Stone tools from the Early Neolithic site Dobroslavsti, Sofia Region - Elka Anastassova

  9. Chemical and petrographical characteristics of pottery fragments from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic site Bulgarchevo, Blagoevgrad Region - Dobrinka Stavrakeva

  10. The social dimension of distance in prehistory: a jadeite axe case from Bulgaria - Tsoni Tsonev

  11. The aesthetics of colour and brilliance – or why were prehistoric persons interested in rocks, minerals, clays and pigments? - Bisserka Gaydarska, John Chapman

  12. Complex faceted and other carnelian beads from the Varna Chalcolithic necropolis: archaeogemmological analysis -
    Ruslan I. Kostov, Olga Pelevina

  13. Green bone pin from Pietrele: possible evidence for intentional colouration of bone artifacts during the Copper Age in the Balkans - Petar Zidarov

  14. Archaeometric investigations of amber from the late Bronze Age and the Iron Age from the territory of present Bulgaria - Silviya Ivanova, Ivelin Kuleff

  15. The Bronze Age Indus quarries of the Rohri Hills and Ongar in Sindh (Pakistan) - Paolo Biagi, Elisabetta Starnini

  16. Mineralogical peculiarities of the heavy mineral fraction from pottery fragments and the sediments from the archaeological site “Ada Tepe”, Kroumovgrad District - George Ajdanlijsky, George Nehrizov, Elitza Ilieva, Dimitar Zlatanov

  17. Household and burial ceramics of Early Iron Age from SW Slovakia: a mineralogical and petrographical study - Miloš Gregor, Radoslav Čambal, Katarína Harmadyová

  18. The challenges facing the diamond edge in its contact with the precious stone when engraving gems (intaglios and cameos) - Stephan Lazarov

  19. A preliminary provenance study of marble artefacts from Aiani, ancient Upper Macedonia, Greece - Andreas Iordanidis

  20. Pottery production in ancient Greece - Christina Dimitrova

  21. Provenance analysis of Roman millstones: mapping of trade areas in Roman Europe - Tatjana M. Gluhak, Wolfgang Hofmeister

  22. Petrographic study of artefacts from a temple of Sabasius in the village of Porominovo, Kyustendil District, Western Bulgaria - Petia Nenova, Oleg Vitov, Ivanka Staykova, Lydia Staykova-Alexandrova

  23. Architectural-decorative details in the Basilica N4 at the town of Sandanski (ancient Parthicopolis), South-West Bulgaria - Svetla Petrova, Peter I. Petrov

  24. On the problem of mineral raw materials of architectural monument of the X century: the Desiatinna Virgin Church in the city of Kyiv - Natalia A. Shevchenko, I. A. Cherevko

  25. Determination of the provenance of the archaeological monument “Samuilov Kamak” - Lubomira Macheva

  26. Preliminary study of the age of the Lanna period by thermoluminescence dating: a case study from the Wiang Kaen ancient site, Chiang Rai, Northern Thailand - Krit Won-in, Pornsawat Wattanakul, Pisutti Dararutana, Sorapong Pongkrapan, Isao Takashima, Narumol Ruangrunsri, Fongsaward S. Singharajwarapan, Thiva Supajanya, Krisanapol Vichapan

  27. Ming porcelain from the Santa Clara-a-velha Monastery in Coimbra, Portugal. First results using a portable µ-EDXRF spectrometer - Mathilda Larsson, João Pedro Veiga

  28. A study on the origin of emeralds in Mogul objects at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg - Elisabeth Strack

  29. Study of the composition of stone tobacco pipe from the archaeological reserve “Pautalia-Velbuzhd-Kyustendil”, Bulgaria - Rossita Stoyanova, Oleg Vitov, Irina Marinova

  30. Geology and petrography of ochres and white clay deposits in Rajasthan State, India - Giovanni Cavallo, Manoj Pandit

  31. The rock as a topos of faith. The interactive zone of the rock-cut monuments – from Urartu to Thrace - Valeria Fol

  32. Geological and mineralogical background of the megalithic and rock-cut sites in Bulgaria and some other European countries - Ruslan I. Kostov

  33. Orientations of dolmens in Bulgaria - Dimitar Kolev, Lyubomir Tsonev, Antonio C. Gonzalez Garcia, Veselina Koleva

  34. Observations upon the constructional connections of the dolmens in Bulgaria - Stanislav Iliev

  35. The ancient Thracian megalithic sanctuary “Markov Kamak” at Tsarev Peak in Rila Mountain: semantic and functional analysis - Vassil Markov

  36. Prehistoric rock sanctuaries in the Eastern Rhodopes and some other mountain regions in Bulgaria - Ana Raduncheva

  37. Early human presence and rock-cut structures in the Eastern Rhodopes - Stefanka Ivanova

  38. Petrography and geological setting of a Thracian rock-hewn sanctuary to the South of the village of Raven, Momchilgrad District, Eastern Rhodopes - Irina Marinova, Petya Nenova

  39. Rock-cut structures in the Eastern Rhodopes and their relation to prehistoric mining - Maria Zlatkova

  40. Looking for metals: megalithic monuments between reality and mythology - George Dimitriadis

  41. “Special” stones in prehistoric practices: cases from Bulgaria - Maya Avramova

  42. Distribution and typology of gold artefacts from the Bronze Age in the alluvial sediments in Bulgaria - Zdravko Tsintsov

  43. On the age of some gold artefacts from the Kraishte Region in South-West Bulgaria - Martin Christov

  44. Preliminary observations on the gold spirals from the ritual structures near Dubene, Karlovo Region - Martin Christov

  45. Métallurgie précieuse dans l’empire d’Orphée - Erik Gonthier

  46. Some aspects of prehistoric and protohistoric metallurgy in Liguria (North-West Italy) - Davide Delfino

  47. Composition of gold and silver objects from the South Urals burial mounds (XV-II c. BC) - Victor V. Zaykov, Anatolii M. Yuminov, Alexandеr D. Tairov, Dmitrii G. Zdanovich, Eugenii I. Churin, Vasilii A. Kotlyarov, Elisaveta V. Zaykova

  48. Genetic interrelation of ores, slags, and nonferrous metals from archaeological monuments of Ukraine - Tatjana Yu. Goshko, Vyacheslav I. Manichev

  49. Ancient Georgian iron metallurgy and its ore base - David M. Kuparadze, Dimitri V. Pataridze, Thomas N. Kerestedjian

  50. Ancient gold mining at the Southern slopes of the Vitosha and Verila Mountains - Stoyan Avdev, Christian Tsankov

  51. Geoarchaeological monuments of ancient mining in Sredna Gora Mountain - Todor Nenov

  52. Electrochemical properties of the Kazichene treasure - Dimitar Chilikov, Christo Protochristov

  53. Archaeological evidence for the exploitation of gold ore deposits at the villages of Kolyo Marinovo (Sarnena Sredna Gora) and Babyak (Western Rhodopes) in Antiquity - Milena Tonkova

  54. Archaeometric study of Iron Age copper alloy artefacts from the South-East Bulgaria - Miglena Vasileva

  55. Culture layers as geological objects - Georgi Baltakov

  56. The investigation of geoarchaeological layers of Krakow city, Poland - Maciej Pawlikowski, Marta Wardas, Joanna Such

  57. The foraminiferal analysis as a method for determination of source material for the pottery fragments from the “Ada Tepe” archaeological site, Kroumovgrad District (Eastern Rhodopes) - George Ajdanlijsky, Boris Valchev, George Nehrizov, Dimitar Zlatanov

  58. Real arrows or “darts from heaven”? Some ideas on the interpretation of belemnites from Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in Bulgaria - Kamen Boyadjiev

  59. Palaeoenvironment and archaeology: the use of diatom analysis in archaeology - Nadja Ognjanova-Rumenova

  60. Faulting and rock deformations established at the ruins of Perperikon (Eastern Rhodopes) and their relation to recent seismic activity - Nikolai Dobrev

  61. Palaeogeographic conditions in the Black Sea area during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic according to archaeological research - Krassimira Apostolova

  62. Underwater sites in the area of Cape Shabla (North-East Bulgaria) - Preslav Peev

  63. Morphodynamics of the coastal zone of the Nessebar Peninsula (Bulgaria): archaeological and geological benchmarks - Christo Preshlenov

  64. Geological aspect of the problem of dating the Great Egyptian Sphinx construction - Vjacheslav I. Manichev, Alexander G. Parkhomenko

  65. Geomorphological survey of the area of archaeological site Bosilkovo (Banite municipality), South Bulgaria - Rossitsa Kenderova

  66. Geomorphological research of the paleoenvironment in the area of ancient villa “Armira” (I-IV century AD) near Ivaylovgrad, South-East Bulgaria (preliminary results) - Ahinora Baltakova

  67. Potential and limitations of the archaeo-geophysical techniques - Yavor Shopov, Diana Stoykova, Antoniya Petrova, Valentin Vasilev, Ludmil Tsankov

  68. Resistivity survey of Thracian burial mounds - Nikola Tonkov

  69. Geophysical survey of the Thracian site at Halka Bunar locality in the area of the Chirpan Heights - Nikola Tonkov

  70. Reconstruction of buried objects by implementation of ground penetrating radar technique: example on Roman tomb in Brestovik (Serbia) - Milena Cukavac, Goran Klemčić, Časlav Lazović

  71. Specific magnetic mineralogy of baked clay archaeological artefacts. Archaeomagnetic dating -Mary Kovacheva

  72. Archaeoseismology in Bulgaria - Boyko Ranguelov, Anelia Bojkova

  73. The archaeological site – possible evidence about multihazard ancient events - Boyko Ranguelov, Elina Mircheva, Igor Lazarenko, Radostina Encheva

  74. Research methods and methodological problems during restoration of prehistorical pottery. Part I - Dimcho Radev, Alexander Sultanov

  75. A new rock feature – cryptic structure (frustumation): possible implication to conservation and preservation of rock-made artefacts - Mikhail Povarennykh

  76. Geoenvironmental problems for world cultural heritage in North-East Bulgaria -Margarita Matova

  77. Geoarchaeological studies in the Sboryanovo National Reserve (North-East Bulgaria) -Diana Gergova

  78. Archaeology and geophysics in the Sboryanovo National Reserve (North-East Bulgaria) - Diana Gergova, Ilijan Katevski

  79. The Big Mound and ancient villa Armira – archaeological data on earthquakes in the Eastern Rhodopes - Gergana Kabakchieva

  80. Monitoring of cracks affecting the “Madara Horseman” rock bas-relief, North-East Bulgaria -Nikolai Dobrev, Elka Avramova-Tacheva, Blahoslav Košťák


Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Brooklyn Museum Image Collections

On January 8th 2009 the Brooklyn Museum issued more than 4000 new images from their Libraries and Archives Department to the web. These join the 5700+ works of art and the nearly 10,000 views of past exhibitions they have already published online.

Among the images they've published is a selection, almost all of Egypt, from their collection of 11,710 glass lantern slides:
In 1849, the Philadelphia daguerreotypists William and Frederick Langenheim introduced the lantern slide: a transparent image on glass that could be projected, in magnified form, onto a surface using a "magic lantern," or sciopticon. This new technology expanded the uses of photography, allowing photographic images to be viewed by a large audience. With lantern slides, Museum curators and educators could illustrate their lectures, letting audience members see detailed studies of objects and sites from around the world.

The Brooklyn Museum's lantern slide collection was started by the Museum's curator of fine arts, William Henry Goodyear, in the late nineteenth century. With the assistance of the photographers Joseph Hawkes and John McKecknie, Goodyear reproduced images of archaeological and architectural sites in Europe as well as images of the Paris Exposition, which Hawkes often hand-colored for more realistic effect. The lantern slide collection also developed through the efforts of the curator of ethnology, Stewart Culin, and his successor Herbert Spinden, who created and purchased images of objects and sites. Historical images of Museum galleries, New York City scenes, and buildings also became part of the collection. In 1921, a significant addition of 118 boxes of slides, originally the property of Franklin Hooper, Director of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, was consigned to the Museum, the Children's Museum, and the Botanic Garden.

With the introduction of smaller transparencies in the 1950s, the use of lantern slides declined. The glass slides have remained quite valuable, however, because they depict scenes, people, and events from an earlier time, as well as sites and objects that simply no longer exist.

The Museum's Library now holds 11,710 glass lantern slides, which were selected from the extensive lantern slide collection in 1990. At that time, archives staff conducted an initial evaluation and sorting project identifying several categories to be excluded from the collection. Among the excluded categories were reproductions from books, non-Brooklyn Museum objects, and items from natural history and general history. Ten years later, the Goodyear lantern slides were cataloged and scanned as part of the Goodyear Archival Collection. In 2005, archives staff produced a detailed content and condition survey of the balance of the lantern slide collection.

Of the original collection of 11,710 glass lantern slides, 3,093 have already been catalogued and scanned as part of the Goodyear Archival Collection. The non-Goodyear slides have been surveyed and described in the current project. Some of the slides were commercially produced; others appear to have been made by Museum or Brooklyn Institute staff. Some were hand-colored. The images have been organized into several broad sections or series, including "Brooklyn Museum," "Native Americans," and "Views." The two largest series of images are "Views: Objects, Egypt" and "Views: Italy."
They have also released a selection of photographs by Alfred P. Maudslay, 1883-1890:
English archaeologist and photographer Alfred Percival Maudslay (1850–1931) first visited Central America in 1872 after being inspired by the images he saw in Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan by John Lloyd Stephens. The "unexpected magnificence of the monuments" in the tropical forests captivated Maudslay, who then dedicated his life to documenting ruins found in Mexico and Central America. Maudslay played a crucial role in exploring and documenting ancient Mayan ruins found in several sites including Palenque, Copan, and Chichen Itza. Between 1881 and 1894, he conducted arduous explorations in remote areas, carrying his photographic equipment, casting plaster, and other supplies to make careful photographic records and plaster casts of architectural ruins. When he returned to England he published his findings in a multi-volume set entitled Biologia Centrali-Americana and made exhibition prints from his glass plate negatives that were shown at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It was in Chicago that Brooklyn Museum founding curators Stewart Culin and William Henry Goodyear saw the prints and arranged to purchase them, along with the Biologia for the Brooklyn Museum. The photographs and the multi-volume book remain an essential foundation for Maya studies, offering thorough views of the architectural ruins along with details of hieroglyphs carved into the monuments. In the face of wide-scale looting that has imperiled the historical record, researchers have turned to Maudslay's photographs, his plaster casts, and his books to better understand Mayan writing and architecture.
The Brooklyn Museum permits users to tag photographs they have online. I encourage readers to join in and assist in documenting these collections. And it is not just old photographs you can tag, but every object they have made available online

Emerging forms of communication in the academy: podcasts

On Saturday 10 January 2009 there was a panel: "Podcasting and the Classics". This is the first experiment by the American Philological Assocation and the Archaeological Institute of America to podcast a session at their joint Annual Meeting.

You can listen to the presentations and get access to supplementary material at the Podcasting and the Classics blog. Contents include:

Introduction: Chris Ann Matteo
Stone Bridge High School, Ashburn VA & Smart's Mill Middle School, Leesburg VA

Patrick Hunt: Tracking Hannibal with Imagination Instead of Images--Podcasting Satellite Maps to a Real Audience
Stanford University

Henry Bender: To Pod or Not to Pod--Podcasting AP Vergil and Latin Literature
The Hill School, St. Joseph's University, and Villanova University

Bret Mulligan: Using the Ear to Train the Eye--Experiments in Podcasting Latin
Haverford College

Jennifer Sheridan Moss: Present Imperfect--Perhaps Future Perfect?
Wayne State University

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

AWOL discussed

I direct you to Michael Smith's important and interesting comments at Is Precolumbian America part of “The Ancient World” ?, and to my response.

New online journals

New, or newly discovered, online journals:

Open access to Oriental Institute Publications

Being an enightened institution, the Oriental Institute allows public access to basic statistics on access to its website. Over the winter break I played a little with the numbers for 2008, and posted a note on them over at The Oriental Institute: Fragments for a History of an Institution.

I'm reproducing part of that posing here. This section lists the twenty-five most frequently downloaded digital versions (pdf) of formal publications of the Oriental Institute for 2008. Note that some of these are fairly recent, but others are old standards.

  1. Oriental Institute 2002-2003 Annual Report, downloaded 4853 times.

  2. OIS 4. Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, Nicole Brisch, ed., downloaded 3152 times.

  3. OIS 3.Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, Nicola Laneri, editor, with contributions by Nicola Laneri, Ellen F. Morris, Glenn M. Schwartz, Robert Chapman, Massimo Cultraro, Meredith S. Chesson, Alessandro Naso, Adam T. Smith, Dina Katz, Seth Richardson, Susan Pollock, Ian Rutherford, John Pollini, John Robb, and James A. Brown, downloaded 2924 times.

  4. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 14, R, 1999, downloaded 2806 times.

  5. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 12, P, 2005, downloaded 2781 times.

  6. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 1, A, part 1, 1964, downloaded 2679 times.

  7. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 18, T, 2006, downloaded 2613 times.

  8. SAOC 62. Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, July 18–22, 2005, Robert D. Biggs, Jennie Myers, and Martha T. Roth, eds., downloaded 2416 times.

  9. OIS 2, Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, Seth L. Sanders, editor, with contributions by Seth L. Sanders, John Kelly, Gonzalo Rubio, Jacco Dieleman, Jerrold Cooper, Christopher Woods, Annick Payne, William Schniedewind, Michael Silverstein-, Piotr Michalowski, Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Theo van den Hout, Paul Zimansky, Sheldon Pollock, and Peter Machinist. (second printing), downloaded 2198 times.

  10. SAOC 61. Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes, Peter F. Dorman and Betsy M. Bryan, editors, downloaded 2192 times.

  11. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 19, T [Tet], 2006, downloaded 2163 times.

  12. MAD 2. Old Akkadian Writing and Grammar, I. J. Gelb, 1952, downloaded 1993 times.

  13. AS 27. Studies Presented to Robert D. Biggs, June 4, 2004 From the Workshop of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, Volume 2, Martha T. Roth, Walter Farber, Matthew W. Stolper and Paula von Bechtolsheim, eds., 2007, downloaded 1886 times.

  14. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 10, M, part 1, 1977, downloaded 1621 times.

  15. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 1, A, part 2, 1968, downloaded 1504 times.

  16. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 10, M, part 2, 1977, downloaded 1495 times.

  17. OIMP 28. Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past, edited by Geoff Emberling and Katharyn Hanson, 2008, downloaded 1495 times.

  18. OIS 2, Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures, Seth L. Sanders, editor, with contributions by Seth L. Sanders, John Kelly, Gonzalo Rubio, Jacco Dieleman, Jerrold Cooper, Christopher Woods, Annick Payne, William Schniedewind, Michael Silverstein-, Piotr Michalowski, Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Theo van den Hout, Paul Zimansky, Sheldon Pollock, and Peter Machinist. (first printing), downloaded 1491 times.

  19. The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD), P, fascicle 3 (pattar to putkiya-), 1997, downloaded 1481 times,

  20. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 11, N, part 1, 1980, downloaded 1370 times.

  21. The Demotic Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Janet H. Johnson, editor: Prologue, downloaded 1362 times.

  22. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 9, L, 1973, downloaded 1306 times.

  23. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), Volume 2, B, 1965, downloaded 1306 times.

  24. OIP 132. The Egyptian Coffin Texts, Volume 8. Middle Kingdom Copies of Pyramid Texts, James P. Allen, 2006, downloaded 1296 times.

  25. OIMP 25. Embroidering Identities: A Century of Palestinian Clothing.
    By Iman Saca in collaboration with Maha Saca, 2006
    , downloaded 1255 times.
OIS 2 in its two printings is the 9th and 18th most popular digital publication of the OI during 2008 - collectively it would be No. 2, downloaded 3689 times.

Proto AWOL

These seven entries appear on the Ancient World Bloggers Group blog, and are the antecedents to what will appear here on AWOL.

AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 1: CEFAEL: Collections de l'Ecole française d'Athènes en ligne.
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 2: The Oriental Institute Electronic Publications Initiative.
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 3: Peter Manuelian's wonderful Giza Archives Project, at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 4: Propylaeum-DOK - Digital Repository Classical Studies is the developing full-text server of the Virtual Library of Classical Studies and is made available by the University Library of Heidelberg.
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 5: Publications of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens are available online in open access formats.
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 6: ETANA Core Texts Full Listing.
AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 7: Electronic resources from the University of Chicago.