For the last year or so I've been interested in trying out Linux, and last Christmas asked for and received a copy of VMWare's Fusion for Mac OS X. Although it worked adequately to get a sense of the OS, it was slow and laggy and I suspected that running Linux as a guest wasn't giving it a fair shake. However, as a combined wedding anniversary and Father's Day present, at my suggestion my wife got me a refurbished IBM ThinkPad T43 that Buy.com had on special. It's by no means a powerhouse, but for about 1/5 the price of the lowest-end 15-inch MacBook Pro it's quite a good machine, with adequate RAM and hard drive space for my purposes, wireless, and an optical drive. It came with Windows XP Professional pre-installed (no discs for it included), but as soon as I set up and registered Windows — which warned me of the dire danger of not installing protection from malware — I pulled out the CD I'd burned with an ISO of 32-bit Ubuntu and installed it, and found the procedure easier than getting started with Windows (although admittedly a little more time-consuming because of having to tranfer the OS from the CD to the hard drive.
One of the things I was curious about was how close Ubuntu has come to becoming as user-friendly as Mac OS X. I found out pretty quickly that for a beginning user it's as easy or possibly even easier that OS X to use the basic installed applications, but once past basic uses there are ... not pitfalls exactly, but procedures which although not particularly difficult are not as just-works-ish as in OS X.
One good example is producing accented characters. A friend of mine who's moving to Mississippi gave my wife and me a stack of CDs which included the wonderful recording of the Irish accordionist James Keane With Friends Like These. For some reason Banshee — the installation of which was another example I'll write about next — wasn't able to find the album's metadata and I decided to enter it manually and came to a track with the tune "Paidín Ó Raifeartaigh" on it. Acute accents are a breeze in Mac OS X once you know the dead-key combinations (Option-e puts an acute over the next letter, for example).
It turns out that in order to get accented letters it's necessary to specify a Compose key in System->Preferences->Keyboard->Layouts->Layout Options; I still don't know what key or keys can serve to substitute for the AltGr key discussed in this article on accents in Linux. I discovered the Character Map (Applications->Accessories) and it's very similar to OS X's Character Palette, but it's not the easiest way to insert characters. What I find puzzling is that searching the on-line help (i.e., the big blue question mark at the top of the screen) for "accents" leads only to a link to the GIMP manual, and only to the entire work, not even to a particular page of it. This seems like a basic enough question that it shouldn't require as much time to figure out as I've put into it.
Now, for Banshee, I refer the curious to these instructions. I had no trouble following them — in fact, I used apt-get as an experiment and had no trouble at all with it — and I'm very happy with the application, but compared to simply clicking a download link and then double-clicking a .pkg file or a .dmg file and dragging the resulting application to the Applications folder is a lot less scary for the inexperienced.
On checking further I see that it's possible to get Banshee via Applications->Add/Remove Applications, and that's a lot simpler process. I've learned a lesson from this: check that option before downloading it from the website of the developer.
Heaven knows even Macs are not entirely intuitive, but Linux, even a Linux as comparatively easy to use as Ubuntu, is more opaque. That said, for people who aren't going to be installing applications not included with the distribution or who are prepared for a varied experience in ease for ones they do download, I think it's a good potential fit.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Yiddish Literature On-Line
Although I don't know any Yiddish, I was happy to see this morning in Friday's New York Times (courtesy David Meadows' Explorator):
I was interested to see that those responsible recognize that some people prefer print, because the page linked above adds:
I probably would have seen notice of this on Friday except that due to AT&T's poor service my Internet access had been out for most of the last two weeks until Friday afternoon and I had a great deal of catching up to do. I'm in the process of switching all my announcement and discussion list addresses to my Gmail address in the expectation I'll switch providers if it happens again.
More than 10,000 works in Yiddish — perhaps more than half of all that was ever published in the language — are now accessible online as part of a joint project between the National Yiddish Book Center, based in Amherst, Mass., and the Internet Archive in San Francisco, the two institutions announced on Friday. The scanning began more than 10 years ago as part of a $5 million effort to create the Steven Spielberg Digital Library, said Aaron Lansky, founder and president of the book center.
I was interested to see that those responsible recognize that some people prefer print, because the page linked above adds:
In addition, we can provide you with used copies and reprints of most Yiddish titles at nominal cost. To check availability, please email us at orders@bikher.org, or phone us at 413-256-4900, x196.
I probably would have seen notice of this on Friday except that due to AT&T's poor service my Internet access had been out for most of the last two weeks until Friday afternoon and I had a great deal of catching up to do. I'm in the process of switching all my announcement and discussion list addresses to my Gmail address in the expectation I'll switch providers if it happens again.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Digitized Medieval Manuscripts
Matthew Fisher of UCLA recently posted to the Digital Medievalist list this excellent news of a new site which indexes and links to complete digitized medieval manuscripts in many different collections.
The site currently links to 37 institutions hosting digitized manuscripts. Although most of the full records include at least a brief note of the contents in the manuscript attributes section, in a random check of about 30 I found three in the St. Gallen collection (Mss. 18, 902, and 722) that do not, and although all the other links I tried worked, the one to the manuscript images for St. Gallen 902 redirected to a 404 message. Fortunately the URL for the error page was specific to that manuscript and simply going up the directory to http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/csg/0902/ worked.
I noticed one minor oddity of the interface related to navigation of multipage search results. Page numbers at the bottom of the page link as one would expect, but "Next" takes you to the next span of 10 pages rather than to the page after the one you're at.
Some collections I know of that are not among those indexed are the Codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis in Cologne, the Royal Library in Copenhagen, the St. Laurentius Digital Manuscript Library at Lund University, the Olomouc Research Library, and the Irnerio Project at Bologna (although the images there are too small to be of much practical use, I suspect).
A good page of resources on medieval manuscripts can be found at Georgetown's Labyrinth site.
It is with great pleasure that we would like to draw your attention to the Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts. Hosted by UCLA's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Catalogue seeks to provide a technological solution to a simple and rather delightful "problem": the breathtaking increase in the number of medieval manuscripts available on the web in their entirety, but in a bewildering range of venues and formats.
Currently, almost one thousand manuscripts, digitized and available in their entirety on the web, have been entered into the Catalogue. Users can search the Catalogue on basic information about manuscripts, such as the location, language, or date of a codex, or browse through the complete Catalogue.
We welcome feedback on your experience using the website, and particularly welcome suggestions for sites not currently represented in the Catalogue.
The Catalogue can be accessed at: http://manuscripts.cmrs.ucla.edu. More information about the project: http://manuscripts.cmrs.ucla.edu/about.php, or by contacting Matthew Fisher at fisher[at]humnet[dot]ucla[dot]edu.
The site currently links to 37 institutions hosting digitized manuscripts. Although most of the full records include at least a brief note of the contents in the manuscript attributes section, in a random check of about 30 I found three in the St. Gallen collection (Mss. 18, 902, and 722) that do not, and although all the other links I tried worked, the one to the manuscript images for St. Gallen 902 redirected to a 404 message. Fortunately the URL for the error page was specific to that manuscript and simply going up the directory to http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/csg/0902/ worked.
I noticed one minor oddity of the interface related to navigation of multipage search results. Page numbers at the bottom of the page link as one would expect, but "Next" takes you to the next span of 10 pages rather than to the page after the one you're at.
Some collections I know of that are not among those indexed are the Codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis in Cologne, the Royal Library in Copenhagen, the St. Laurentius Digital Manuscript Library at Lund University, the Olomouc Research Library, and the Irnerio Project at Bologna (although the images there are too small to be of much practical use, I suspect).
A good page of resources on medieval manuscripts can be found at Georgetown's Labyrinth site.
Monday, July 28, 2008
More on Codex Sinaiticus
Back in May I posted about some of the pages of Codex Sinaiticus held by the University of Leipzig being made available on-line. Recently, a cooperative project by the four institutions that own parts of the codex has put up a larger number of leaves from Leipzig and the British Library, including parts of I Chronicles, 2 Esdras and Lamentations, and all of Esther, Tobit, Jeremiah, Psalms (including Ps. 151), and the Gospel of Mark.
The pages are nicely photographed in color, with choices of views with standard light and "raking light," in which illumination is nearly parallel to the page. Even at the highest resolution the images are clear; a transcription is provided, and there's a frame for translations into your choice of English, German, Greek, and Russian, although in spot-checking the only passages for which I found translations were Psalms 1-35, and those only into English.
The first phase will end in November, 2008, and the implication is that after that more leaves will be made available.
The pages are nicely photographed in color, with choices of views with standard light and "raking light," in which illumination is nearly parallel to the page. Even at the highest resolution the images are clear; a transcription is provided, and there's a frame for translations into your choice of English, German, Greek, and Russian, although in spot-checking the only passages for which I found translations were Psalms 1-35, and those only into English.
The first phase will end in November, 2008, and the implication is that after that more leaves will be made available.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
The Internet Archive and Microsoft Live Book Search
A recent episode of Leo Laporte's TWiT podcast, number 144 from May 25th, has Internet Archive founder and director Brewster Kahle as the featured guest for the first 50 minutes. He talks about a number of issues, including Microsoft's decision to cease scanning and pull out of the Open Content Alliance, the victory over the FBI in the National Security Letter request and its associated gag order, and other matters related to book digitization.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Evaluating the Quality of Electronic Texts
Lisa Spiro, director of the Digital Media Center at Rice University’s Fondren Library, has an excellent blog Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. A few weeks ago she posted a clear and detailed comparison of 5 collections of digital texts (Google Books, the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, Early American Fiction, and Making of America), concentrating on 6 factors that determine the usefulness of each for purposes of scholarship:
Presciently she omitted the soon-to-be-shuttered Microsoft Live Book search service.
Her posts are always worth reading, but this one is particularly recommended.
- Quality of the scanning
- Quality of the OCR/text conversion
- Quality of the metadata
- Terms of use
- Convenience
- Reputation in the world of scholarship
Presciently she omitted the soon-to-be-shuttered Microsoft Live Book search service.
Her posts are always worth reading, but this one is particularly recommended.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Microsoft Book Search Closing its Cyberdoors
Microsoft announced today that it had advised its partners that its Live Book and Academic search services will be shutting down next week, and that they're going to stop scanning entirely. Fortunately, the content already scanned will continue to be available through Microsoft's general search interface at Live.com.
This is quite unfortunate, because they had done at least as good a job with their interface, provision of metadata, and search capabilities as Google has done with their book search — and often better — and their quality control has been excellent, far better than Google's. The collection made available through Live Books never extended beyond English-language titles (at least I've never seen anything there in another language) and was nowhere near as comprehensive as Google's, but it was a useful supplement.
Some reflections can be found at the Search Engine Land blog, and additional links to related news stories at Techmeme. Peter Suber also provides some extensive quotes from other blogs at his Open Access News blog, and Peter Brantley, executive director of the Digital Library Federation, has posted his thoughts at his blog.
ResourceShelf last year provided a useful set of links to other large digitization projects. Oddly, neither it nor the more comprehensive British Columbia site linked there includes Gallica at the Bibliothèque nationale; Gallica is an excellent source of not only French works (including not just books but maps, images, music, and manuscripts), but also of works in other languages, Latin in particular but yes, even some in English. Its interface is less than ideal, but it's usable.
This is quite unfortunate, because they had done at least as good a job with their interface, provision of metadata, and search capabilities as Google has done with their book search — and often better — and their quality control has been excellent, far better than Google's. The collection made available through Live Books never extended beyond English-language titles (at least I've never seen anything there in another language) and was nowhere near as comprehensive as Google's, but it was a useful supplement.
Some reflections can be found at the Search Engine Land blog, and additional links to related news stories at Techmeme. Peter Suber also provides some extensive quotes from other blogs at his Open Access News blog, and Peter Brantley, executive director of the Digital Library Federation, has posted his thoughts at his blog.
ResourceShelf last year provided a useful set of links to other large digitization projects. Oddly, neither it nor the more comprehensive British Columbia site linked there includes Gallica at the Bibliothèque nationale; Gallica is an excellent source of not only French works (including not just books but maps, images, music, and manuscripts), but also of works in other languages, Latin in particular but yes, even some in English. Its interface is less than ideal, but it's usable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)