Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Project

Although not a topic for Slavic Studies or Central Asian Studies librarianship, I will periodically post some interesting web-sites for my global readers. The purpose of these posts is to acquaint our readership with recent advances in digitization projects around the globe.


Jane Austen’s fiction manuscripts are the first significant body of holograph evidence surviving for any British novelist. They represent every stage of her writing career and a variety of physical states: working drafts, fair copies, and handwritten publications for private circulation. The manuscripts were held in a single collection until 1845, when at her sister Cassandra’s death they were dispersed among family members, with a second major dispersal, to public institutions and private collections, in the 1920s Digitization enables their virtual reunification and will provides scholars with the first opportunity to make simultaneous ocular comparison of their different physical and conceptual states; it will facilitate intimate and systematic study of Austen’s working practices across her career, a remarkably neglected area of scholarship within the huge, world-wide Austen critical industry.



Many of the Austen manuscripts are frail; open and sustained access has long been impossible for conservation and location reasons. Digitization at this stage in their lives not only offers the opportunity for the virtual reunification of a key manuscript resource, it will also be accompanied by a record in as complete a form as possible of the conservation history and current material state of these manuscripts to assist their future conservation.



The digital edition will include in the first instance all Jane Austen’s known fiction manuscripts and any ancillary materials held with them.



Source: Simon Tanner
Director, King's Digital Consultancy Services, King's College London, Centre for Computing in the Humanities,
26-29 Drury Lane, London WC2B 5RL
Tel: +44 (0)7887 691716 or Admin: +44 (0)20 7848 2861
Email: simon.tanner@kcl.ac.uk
http://www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/

Digital Newspaper Archive Launched at Dr. Friedrich Teßmann Library

Source Description: The digital newspaper archive of the Dr. Friedrich Teßmann Library offers the possibility to skim and scan digitized newspapers and periodicals published in the Alpine area.



The coverage at Dr. Friedrich Teßmann Library begins from 1794 through 2006.The site is in English, German and Italian languages. The library collects and displays digital copies of Alpine Newspapers.

The Manumed Project from the European Union Funding

Manumed is a Euro-Mediterranean project funded by the European Union within the framework of the Euromed Heritage IV

The Manumed project database currently consists of a body of documentation (manuscripts, prints, videos, radio broadcasts, etc.) including 255,635 digital files and 13,373 descriptive summaries.

New functions will be available as of 17th May 2010 which will notably include the option of performing direct searches of the content of written documents using keywords (OCR technology).

One can discover the latest documents to be included in the platform, which notably include manuscripts from the Lmuhub Ulahbib manuscript library (Bejaïa, Algeria) and Arabic and Berber manuscript content notably relating to the sciences and mathematics -- http://data.manumed.org/eng/notices/68651-Fonds-des-Manuscrits.html

For more information about the Manumed project, see http://data.manumed.org/eng/cms/index.html

Version one of the Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography Published

http://digital-scholarship.org/dcpb/dcpb.htm
This bibliography presents over 360 selected English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding digital curation and preservation.
Most sources have been published between 2000 and the present; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 2000 are also included.  Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints for published articles in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories.  Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical.
See the scope note for further details:
http://digital-scholarship.org/dcpb/scope.htm
The following recent Digital Scholarship publications may
also be of interest:
* Digital Scholarship 2009 http://digital-scholarship.org/sepb/annual/ds2009.htm
* Google Book Search Bibliography, Version 6 http://digital-scholarship.org/gbsb/gbsb.htm
* Institutional Repository Bibliography, Version 2 http://digital-scholarship.org/irb/irb.html
* Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 4 http://digital-scholarship.org/etdb/etdb.htm

Some Newspaper digitization projects around the Globe

1. ICON: International Coalition on Newspapers
   

   http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm
   

2. Digital Archives of Mongolian Newspapers (1990-1995)
   

   http://www.pressinst.org.mn/cgi-bin/library
   

3. Digital National Library of Serbia-Newspaper Project
   

   http://digital.nb.rs/eng/novine.php Here newspapers like Zenit can be read http://digital.nb.rs/eng/browse.php?collection=no-zenit
   

4. Tibet Mirror at Columbia University
   

   http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6981643_000/
   

5. National Library of Germany Newspaper Digitization Project (ZEFYS, das Zeitungsinformationssystem)
   

   http://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/index.php?id=start
   

6. The Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek includes a lot of free resources(Source: Dr. Katalin Radics, UCLA Library)
   

   http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/about.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7&lang=en
   

   
    

Со праздником победы

Со праздником победы !


Со праздником победы ! Дорогие друзья я вас всех от всего сердца поздравляю со праздником Победы над Фашисткой Германией. Некогда вас не забудем вас за ваш подвиг. Вечно храню в моей душе вас героизм. Спасибо вам завсе!

Alim and Fargana Qasimov: Spiritual Music of Azerbaijan (2009)

This is a very interesting documentary on one genre of the classical music of Azerbaijan. The source is Internet Archive's open source digital collection. The documentary has sub-titles in English.



The direct link to the documentary is here

A new newspaper digitization project from Canada!

Dear Readers,

 

    Although, this blog is primarily dedicated to the Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, periodically as the contributor to this blog, I post some interesting links. I hope that you will take full advantage of this open source information. In the era of "accepted Globalization", we often see efforts to bring forth the information that was previously crystallized in the print form to the digital world. The word open-access serves us as a reminder of the fact that some of the information content in the world is still proprietary. What this means is that the Open-Access offers an alternate way of disseminating information to those who would consume it.

    Here is some information about a new newspaper digitization project from Canada. The project is titled, "Nova Scotia Historical Newspapers Online."

    The self description of the project is as follows, "Through the autumn and winter of 2009-2010, a trial newspaper digitization project sponsored by Libraries Nova Scotia was carried out in Halifax at Nova Scotia Archives & Records Management, and in Sydney at the Beaton Institute, Cape Breton University. Both institutions hold extensive collections of historical newspapers from around Nova Scotia, and offer specialized in-house digitization services for archival material.

The objectives of the project were to:

1. maximize opportunity for community-based participation and skills training through divested, decentralized project design and management
   
2. promote cooperation/collaboration between government and public-sector organizations
   
3. help promote the visibility and relevance of Libraries NS
   
4. help promote the significance and value of Nova Scotia's historical newspapers
   
5. promote recognition of at-risk newspaper heritage
   
6. promote opportunities offered by digital technology
   
7. develop and promote use of appropriate technical standards and best practices
   
8. ensure minimal overhead administrative costs
   

 

The project has resulted in over 19,000 pages of digitized newspaper content. Sixteen titles were included, from 1769 to 1991; all were scanned from original copies. In general, significant newspapers with a brief publication history were selected. Decisions were also based on page size (small enough to fit current equipment) and physical condition. Since this was a trial project, the partners scanned what was available in their own newspaper holdings, although when time permitted, efforts were made to borrow scattered 'missing' issues held elsewhere."(
http://librariesns.ca/content/newspaper-digitization)

Call for Papers: Building Open Society in Central Asia & South Caucasus

 

The Central Eurasia Project's Occasional Paper Series

 

Call for Papers: Building Open Society in Central Asia & South Caucasus

 

The Open Society Institute (OSI), a private operating and grant-making foundation, aims to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform. OSI was created in 1993 by investor and philanthropist George Soros to support his foundations in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. OSI has expanded the activities of the Soros foundations network to other areas of the world where the transition to democracy is of particular concern. Active in more than 70 countries, the Open Society Institute works to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. Working with local communities, the Open Society Institute supports justice and human rights, freedom of expression and access to public health and education.

 

The Central Eurasia Project (CEP) is one of OSI's regional initiatives. CEP's mission is to promote social progress and human rights in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. In doing so, CEP coordinates closely with the Soros Foundations in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. CEP also manages OSI's activities related to those closed society countries in the region without national foundations, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The programmatic areas of CEP include human rights, labor migration, electricity and hydropower governance, and social and economic policy.

The instruments of CEP's work to pursue its mission are research and advocacy, public information, and targeted grants.

 

Occasional Paper Series:

CEP is looking for authors who are interested in contributing to CEP's Occasional Papers. The Occasional Papers is a new series of well written papers that will explore under-researched issues and trends that are important for OSI's efforts to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. As such, they will inform OSI's programmatic approaches in the region, but will also serve to introduce these issues into the discussion of the wider community of policy makers, analysts, academics, practitioners and others who take an interest in that work on Central Asia and the Caucasus.

 

Long-term challenges to the development of open societies in Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus remain insufficiently discussed in the West. While there are a few outlets for high-policy related discussions or mediums that address academic questions whose practical value is limited, there is a need for a paper series that identifies challenges to open society and its supporters in Central Asia and the Caucasus, discusses potential approaches to achieve solutions, and opens these issues to the informed public for debate. While the Occasional Papers will primarily serve an OSI audience, they will also be distributed widely to the interested NGO, academic, policy-making and professional community except in special cases.

 

CEP is looking for contributors who are interested in authoring a paper of about 25 - 30 pages. Applications are welcome from individuals from a variety of backgrounds including researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and PhD students from the former Soviet Union, U.S. and Europe. CEP is especially interested in papers that would cover the following topics:

 

* Freedom of religion in Central Asia and the South Caucasus: Issues and Implications

* Understanding Islamic civil society in Central Asia

* China's role in Central Asia

* CASAREM challenges for Central Asia: Transparency, accountability and domestic energy security

* Public utilities (gas, water, electricity) issues in Central Asia and the South Caucasus

* The War on Terror in Central Asia: Ramifications for Human Rights, Societies and States

* Minority rights in Central Asia and the South Caucasus

* Civil societies role in legal remedies for environmental issues in Central Asia and the South Caucasus

* Implications of information and communication technologies for democratic governance and practice

* Cotton monoculture and agricultural reform in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan

Proposals for papers on other topics related to open society values in Central Asia and the South Caucasus are also welcome.

Interested authors should apply by sending in a complete application package consisting of:

* Expose of the paper no longer than three pages,

* Remuneration requirement,

* CV,

* Writing samples in English by email to ceppapers@sorosny.org. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and will be reviewed by an expert committee. Successful proposals should be finalized into full papers within two months; drafts will be peer reviewed before the final drafts are published. A limited amount of travel money is available for selected papers that require field research.

Please also see http://www.soros.org/initiatives/cep/news/cep-occasional-papers-20100503

 

Cornelius Graubner

Program Officer

Central Eurasia Project

Open Society Institute

400 West 59th St.

New York, NY 10019

T: +1 212 506 0008

F: +1 212 548 4651

www.soros.org/initiatives/cep