Tag: Information access

A bunch of online Oriental books – Bibliothek Goussen

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email from Jesus de Prado draws my attention to a new bunch of online books, which we all need to take a look at:

Contents: http://s2w.hbz-nrw.de/ulbbn/nav/classification/16431

Misc books: http://s2w.hbz-nrw.de/ulbbn/nav/classification/135030

Arabic Christian: http://s2w.hbz-nrw.de/ulbbn/nav/classification/16475

Armenian: http://s2w.hbz-nrw.de/ulbbn/nav/classification/17269

Coptic: http://s2w.hbz-nrw.de/ulbbn/nav/classification/17261

Ethiopic: http://s2w.hbz-nrw.de/ulbbn/nav/classification/17268

Georgian: http://s2w.hbz-nrw.de/ulbbn/nav/classification/17270

Syriac: http://s2w.hbz-nrw.de/ulbbn/nav/classification/17267

Full coloured-image, quite high resolution reproductions with full bibliographical details.  

Thank you!  Well, I had to go and look.  The list of titles is quite impressive.

The interface is a bit clunky, but there are PDF’s to be had, although it looks as if each section is a PDF (which is a bit silly, and a nuisance; please fix this, chaps).  In some cases they have placed a PDF of the lot on the left-hand side.

Design is a little weird.  They seem to imagine — as librarians do — that you would want to use the books over a slow internet connection on a slow site, rather than on your PC.  The interface is the usual, fussy, self-centered thing that library sites so often are, designed to maximise their traffic rather than assist the reader.  Come on chaps; Google books and Archive.org show how it should be done.  Why reinvent the wheel?

But these are small points.  On to the good stuff!

The Arabic list contains a considerable quantity of really old books, 17th century, of great value.  These belong to the first wave of European interest in Arabic studies.  The 1661 Eutychius, for instance, is there.

The Armenian list includes a catalogue of the Mechitarist daughter monastery in Vienna.  Aucher’s edition of Eusebius Chronicle is there — a year or two back I paid a serious sum for a photocopy of just volume 1!

The Coptic list includes a catalogue of the Borgia mss in the Vatican.

The Syriac list includes six volumes of Bedjan’s Acta martyrum et sanctorum.   The Urmiah catalogue is there, which I have only seen so far in a rather rubbishy photocopy PDF.  Mind you, they don’t seem to have learned the trick of photographing with a piece of black paper behind each page, to stop bleed-through of the text on the reverse.  You can download the whole Urmiah catalogue.

This is probably the first sign of useful material from a German source that I have seen.  More please!

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Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 2 now on Archive.org

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A customer for my CDROM of the Fathers wrote to ask if I had a PDF of vol. 2 of Cyril’s Commentary on John, since I had scanned it for my site.  Luckily for him I had the chance to look, and found the images first shot.

I’ve now uploaded a searchable PDF of this volume to Archive.org.  It’s here:

http://www.archive.org/details/CyrilOfAlexandriaCommentaryOnJohnVolume2Tr.T.Randell

(Or will be in a few minutes)

This was the final volume in the Oxford Movement Library of the Fathers series of translations.  The series began in 1838.  By 1880 E.B.Pusey was dead, and the movement was history.  Yet, somehow, this one last volume appeared, in 1885.  It wasn’t published by Parker of Oxford, and it wasn’t edited by Pusey; but the title-page was uniform with it.  The last few volumes were unnumbered.

By this time the Ante-Nicene Fathers series was 20 years old.  Most collections of the Library of the Fathers were obsolete.  Very few of them indeed ever acquired this last, final volume.  I obtained this one through the courtesy of Glasgow University Library, who benevolently photocopied it and posted it to me.  May their name be ever remembered; for I doubt any other copy of this very, very uncommon book, is ever likely to get scanned.

Volume 1 of the Commentary contained books 1-5.  It was translated by Phillip E. Pusey, the crippled son of old Pusey, who predeceased his father.  P.E.Pusey edited Cyril’s works, and his editions still have value.  But as a translator he was useless, tending to transliterate the Greek.  A vicious review, which I have never been able to locate, halted his efforts and he never proceeded further with Cyril on John.  The otherwise unknown T. Randell did this volume, and made a nice job of it.  It’s far easier to read than vol. 1!  It covers books 6-12, although some of those books are lost and only catena fragments were available.

There’s quite a lot of Orthodox interest in this text.  Let’s hope this helps make it more available. 

 

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Fragments of Eusebius in the Mingana collection

Posted on by Roger Pearse

PDF’s are such a blessing.  I’ve been looking at the PDF of volume 1 of the Mingana collection of Syriac manuscripts in Birmingham.  How quickly we take these for granted!  Once, just to consult such a volume, would have meant a day off work, a 60 mile journey, and being robbed blind for copies — if I was even allowed copied.  That was the situation, only five years ago.  Not now!

This will be a dull post, I fear.  Because I ordered some photos of manuscripts in the collection, but no longer remember what was so precious in them!  This post is my journey of discovery.

On p.599 of the PDF (col. 1197 of the book), there is listed the various snippets of Eusebius in various manuscripts.  In July 2008 I went through these, and ordered the following from the Mingana:

Ms. Mingana Syr. 332      Folios 1-9a          Eusebius
Ms. Mingana Syr. 480      Folios 29a-31b       Eusebius
Ms. Mingana Syr. 589      Folios 1-6a          Eusebius

Time to refresh my memory on these!

First I’m opening the Mingana catalogue in Adobe Acrobat and running an OCR on the file to create scannable text.  I only wish Adobe used some decent OCR software.  Come on chaps, talk to Abbyy!

 OK.  On p. 308 of the PDF (col. 616) we find ms. 332.  On ff.6b-7a there are quotations on the genealogy of Jesus, from Ephraim, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Philoxenus.  Wonder why I ordered as far as 9a.

 On p. 432 of the PDF (col. 863) is ms. 480.  Ff. 29a-31b consist of tables to show that there is no contradiction between the two genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke.  The first table is from Severus of Antioch; the others from Ephraim, Eusebius and Philoxenus.  Not sure why I thought this stuff was worthwhile, now.

On p. 562 of the PDF (col. 1125) is ms. 589. 

  • Ff.1b-3b = A short treatise on ecclesiastical chronology dealing with the lunar and solar months. 
  • Ff. 4a-5a : Another short treatise on chronology by Eusebius of Caesarea (called Eusebius of Palestine).
  • Fol. 5 : The months in which the year begins in the calendar of the Jews, the Arabs, the Copts, the Syrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians and the Armenians.
  • Ff. 5b-17b: A medical treatise on the composition of the human body, by Ahud’ immeh Antipater, who mayor may not be the same man as Ahud-‘immeh of Tegrit.
  • and so on.

Fascinating stuff… or not.  This is what so manuscripts consist of, tho; pages of short, dubious-looking texts.

The upshot is that there is unlikely to be much here to impact on my Eusebius project.  Wonder what the “short treatise on chronology is”?  I might toss that over to my translator and ask.

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Birmingham Special Collections goes over to the Dark Side (a bit)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Drat.  The Mingana library in Birmingham have had a mental breakdown of some kind.  They used to sell colour digital images of sub-publication standard for 1GBP (about $1.50) a go.  These were really very good for research purposes, although of course a journal publication would need better quality.

I asked them about copies of the Combefis book (see previous post).  I learn today that they’ve increased the charge to 2.50GBP, plus another 25% for fun; i.e. 3.10GBP, around $5 a go. 

I need 14 pages.  That would have been 14 GBP, which is a lot, when you consider it is merely pressing a shutter 14 times, but I would have paid it.  But there’s no way I would pay nearly 50 GBP for the equivalent of 14 photocopies!

This is really disappointing.  The Birmingham Special Collections people, who own the Mingana library, are people who I watch with interest, because they really do have some innovative ideas.  They’ve led the way in putting Syriac mss online, and making them freely available.  They introduced this system of £1 photographs of manuscripts, which is clearly the way to go.  They allow us to bring our cameras in and photograph, which makes them heroes in my view; we really ought to get all the Mingana mss photographed.  And they are nice, helpful people.  I approve of these guys.

And then they do something like this.

I can only imagine that need for money — a chronic need in all libraries — led some minor official at a meeting to look at this.  Probably they were selling quite a few of the £1 images.  And the same official, with the official lack of imagination, supposed that a 210% increase would generate 210% more money.  Of course it won’t; it will kill the sales dead.

No doubt they looked greedily at the charges demanded by libraries like the Bodleian, not realising that hardly anyone ever buys any of those overpriced images.  You don’t make money by charging the earth and scaring the punters away. 

How we need a public body to regulate these charges!

This may mean that I shall have to abandon the idea of using the Combefis fragment in my Eusebius book.  But if I do, there will be some pretty trenchant words in a footnote, saying who and why, for the benefit of posterity.  First against the wall, of course, will be the Bodleian.

Sad.

In the meantime, let’s see if I can find a library that (a) has a copy and (b) will sell me a reproduction at some reasonable price.

UPDATE: Durham University want £15 a photo — which is sick –, the Bodleian we know about, and the only other copy here in the UK, held in the British Library, well… their website has been redesigned and I can’t find anything.  I wonder if there are any copies in the USA?

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The Combefis publication containing a Eusebius fragment

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I got quite cross on my Oxford visit during August, because although I located a volume of excerpts, with a fragment of Eusebius, I was unable to obtain a reproduction thanks to the greed of Bodleian staff.  A price of 29p for a black-and-white photo is not bad; but a price of £3.87 per greyscale (just a setting change on the same camera, which costs no more to take) is ridiculous, and a price of £17.20 for colour (ditto) is obscene. 

Indeed I wrote there and then an email of protest to the head of imaging services, a certain James Allan. The professionalism and customer-focus of the Bodleian and that particular bureaucrat may be judged by his failure to even acknowledge it.  As a result, I failed to note here the details of what I actually want to get; and have had to scrabble around for details of it again! 

The book is volume 1 of a two volume anthology (Graeco-Lat. patrum bibliothecae novum Auctarium) of extracts starting with works by Asterius of Amasea from various unspecified manuscripts, edited by Francois Combefis: S. Patris nostri Asterii Amaseae episcopi, aliorum plurium… Ecclesiae graecae patrum… orationes & homiliae / opera ac studio R.P.Fr. Francisci Combefis. Published: Parisiis : sumptibus Antonii Bertier, 1648.  The Bodleian shelfmark was R 6.16, 15 Jur.  There is also a copy in Birmingham ML Special Collections, shelfmark “r f BR 62”.

The portion I want consists of columns 779-791.  This is Greek text with facing Latin translation.  I noted when I saw it to emphasise that the Greek text was really important, because the binding might work against me!

I also wanted some introductory matter.  There were two title pages; then a letter Illustrissimo Franciae… covering 4 pages, and a single page headed Candido Lectori, which alone gave information about sources.  The elderly paper means that at least a grey-scale image will be necessary.

Now to find someone who will sell me copies at a reasonable price!

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Typesetting and other evils

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Sooner or later I’m going to receive the final versions of the translations that I have commissioned of Eusebius Quaestiones and Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel.  I want to sell some copies of these to libraries.  Firstly, that will get them into the hands of the academic constituency, who still turn their noses up at online resources.  Secondly it will give them a better chance of survival; websites can be ephemeral.  And thirdly, it should help recoup some of the costs — not a small issue, since I looked today at the total bill and it is not small.

I’ve never published a thing, so it’s all a bit new to me.  What I want is to use print-on-demand if possible, but not produce anything rubbish; the libraries will not want to buy rubbish, and all the purchasers will be able to evaluate, really, is the quality of book making.

So probably it should be hardback, a sewn binding, on good quality paper.  That says I ought to use traditional publishing, if I could find it.  But I don’t really want 50 or 100 copies on my floor, which points to print-on-demand and sites like Lulu.com and blurb.com.  Trouble is, the books these produce are not conspicuous for quality.

I certainly need to get it typeset, or look unbearably amateurish.  I don’t know anything about typesetting, or how one does this or gets it done.

Does anyone have any ideas?  Say it’s 100 pages, about the size of A5, a Loeb, or a Sources Chretiennes edition?

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British Library FoI: how much do they make from reproduction of mss images?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still trying to find out just how much money the British Library make from charging for the reproduction of manuscript items online. I raised an FoI request here, and got an answer for all items (not manuscripts alone).  Click the tag “British Library” to see all the posts on this.

I note that the British library charges a fee to websites that use digital images of pages from manuscripts from the BL collection.  Please would you let me know, for each of the past 5 years (either calendar or financial, whichever is more convenient):

How many requests were made for use of BL collection images of these items on third party websites?

How much income was received by the BL in consideration of the use of BL collection images of these items on third party websites?

The reply: 

The table below indicates the number of requests for rights to reproduce BL collection images of manuscript items, for which a charge was made, and the income derived from those transactions for the five years in question.

  2004/2005 2005 / 2006 2006 / 2007 2007 / 2008 2008 / 2009
Number 772 845 959 527 664
Income 138,277 GBP 121,162 GBP 105,592 GBP 95,175 GBP 122,578 GBP

These figures are interesting, but still don’t indicate what proportion of this was on websites, as opposed to in printed books (which I suspect make up most of it).  I’m not quite sure how to find this out, tho.

UPDATE: I queried this, and got back the reply that they don’t hold that information on their systems!  That is, they levy charges but have no idea how many people are paying them, or if anyone is.  How very, very British Library.

I wonder if I complain to the Information Commissioner, whether they will get told to “go and find out”.  If there are 600 a year, it would hardly be a great task to look through the lot.

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More people translating the Fathers

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Maureen has left a note to tell me of another site where bits of the fathers are being translated.  It’s here.  The author is John Litteral, who appears to be translating extracts from ancient biblical commentaries.  If so, this is very welcome!  I’ve not managed to find my way around the site yet to be sure.

There is also a collection of links to the fathers.  Among the links is one to a site by Gary Anderson and a translation of portions of Ambrose’s De paradiso, here.  As far as I knew this was untranslated.

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The lost part of John Chrysostom’s second sermon against the Jews

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Another forgotten paper has emerged from my pile during scanning of articles, and reminds me that I need a translator; someone who can handle Chrysostom.

John Chrysostom preached eight sermons against the Jews during his time at Antioch.  The second of these is markedly shorter than the others; about 30% of the size.  This led researcher Wendy Pradels to wonder whether the text was damaged, and to search for manuscripts.  Her article on the search is here, and in 1999 her persistence was rewarded by the discovery of an unknown manuscript in Lesbos which contained the full version of the sermon. In 2001 she published the extra text, with a German translation, and I have just come across my copy of it.

But as far as I know, no English version of this exists.  I wonder whether a scholar would be interested in making me a translation!

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Eusebius, Eclogae Propheticae – Gaisford edition now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still going through piles of photocopies, turning them into PDF’s and throwing the paper copies out.  Occasionally I’m finding treasures.  I had forgotten that I paid the rare books room at Cambridge University Library 16.51 GBP — about $25 — to make a copy of the latest (1842!) edition of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Eclogae Propheticae. 

This curious work is three books of a now lost work, the General Elementary Introduction to Christianity, originally in 10 books.  The eclogae is books 6-9, found in a Vienna manuscript, and consisting mainly of extracts from the Septuagint Old Testament prophesying Christ, and for some reason always known as Eclogae Propheticae.  A few other scraps of the General Elementary Introduction exist; I suspect these will be fragments from catenas.

Gaisford’s edition is a little book, with a Latin introduction and no translation (drat the man).  I’ve created a PDF, and uploaded it to the web at Archive.org, here.  It’s about 28mb in size, although not searchable — I don’t have ancient Greek OCR capabilities! 

There has never been a translation of this work into English.  I am advised, tho, that such a translation would be very easy to make.  I know of at least one person working on Porphyry who has translated a large chunk of it for his own purposes, and may complete the work.  I seem to recall that someone else also has a projected translation.

If nothing emerges in a year or two, I may commission one.

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