“1.The book containing the service of the Mass for the whole year; a mass-book. 2. A Roman Catholic book of devotions, esp. when illuminated; an illuminated book of hours, etc.â€? (From the OED.n1.I,1-2)

Starter Links: [under construction]

“6. Illuminated matter or work; a picture in an illuminated manuscript, an illumination. In early use also: the action or process of rubricating letters or of illuminating a manuscript.â€? (From the OED.n.6)

Starter Links: [under construction]

A book printed using moveable type prior to the year 1501 AD.

Starter Links: [under construction]

“6. a. The embellishment or decoration of a letter or writing with bright or luminous colours, the use of gold and silver, the addition of elaborate tracery or miniature illustrations, etc.: see ILLUMINATE v. 8. b. with pl. The designs, miniatures, and the like, employed in such decoration.â€? (From the OED.n.6,a-b)

Starter Links: [under construction]

“A word inserted between the lines or in the margin as an explanatory equivalent of a foreign or otherwise difficult word in the text; hence applied to a simliar explanatory rendering of a word given in a glossary or dictionary. Also, in a wider sense, a comment, explanation, interpretation. Often used in a sinister sense: A sophistical or disingenuous interpretation. b. A collection of such explanations, a glossary; also, an interlinear translation of, or series of verbal explanations upon, a continuous text. 2. A poetical composition in which a stanza of some well-known poem is treated as a text for amplification, each of the successive stanzas of the ‘gloss’ being made to end with one of the lines or couplets of the text.â€? (From OED.n.1-2)

Starter Links: [under construction]

A manuscript from which another is copied.

Starter Links: [under construction]

“A leaf of paper (in OE. called bóc, BOOK); a legal document or ‘deed’ written (usually) upon a single sheet of paper, parchment, or other material, by which grants, cessions, contracts, and other transactions are confirmed and ratified.â€? (From the OED.n1)

Starter Links: [under construction]

“3. A sheet of paper printed on one side only, forming one large page.â€? (From the OED.n.)

Starter Links:[under construction]

An illuminated manuscript used primarily from the 13th through 16th centuries; a personal prayer book for the laity to abide by the Christian church’s daily protocol of devotional prayer.

Starter Links:[under construction]

“A book containing a set or collection of antiphons.â€? (From the OED.n.)

Starter Links: [under construction]

Online resource and course related to paleography.

“The English Handwriting 1500-1700 course has been designed for flexibility in an attempt to serve the needs of beginners and more experienced researchers alike. There are a number of ways in which you might approach the materials presented here, depending on whether you require information from the ground up or merely a convenient reference/practice resource.

The ‘historical introduction’ with Billingsley’s Pens Excellencie are resources that might be consulted at any time, but will, in different ways, provide an introductory overview to the subject of early modern English handwriting.” (From the web site.)

Starter Links: English Handwriting Site | Humbul Humanities Hub

Online educational tool to help teach Latin paleography.

“Ductus, from the Latin ducere (to lead), is a digital program designed for the teaching of Latin paleography either locally or via the internet. The program is based on 60 extremely high resolution facsimiles of manuscripts from the period 150-1500 A.D. It includes videos depicting a (modern) scribe at work, a 14-session course, and extensive glossaries and support documentation. It is already used byteachers and independent scholars around the world. In 2000 it received The Australian Award for Excellence in Tertiary Educational Multimedia. Ductus is available either for use by individuals or by institutions with a site licensing arrangement.

Ductus features:

Ductus includes an introduction to the history of western European handwriting and detailed interactive analyses of 60 sample scripts chosen from manuscripts in European, North American and Australian collections.” (From the web site.)

Starter Links: Ductus |
Detailed information about the CD-ROM

Online learning tool for the study of palaeography.

“In its origin, the ‘tutorial’ was conceived for seminars in the Centre for English Local History on medieval and early-modern palaeography, each comprising ten hours of contact time. To a large extent, the structure has been determined by that original objective. We have, however, tried subsequently to expand the material and the structure to make it more relevant for other users. It is intended as an introduction to practical palaeography – how to read hands. Although there is a smattering of formal palaeography, diplomatics and codicology, that material is included only in so far as it assists in practical reading.” (From the web site.)

Starter Links: Palaeography Home Page| Paleography Links for Teachers | Websites For Medievalists |

Online tool that provides its users with a broad overview of types, styles, and information on the culture of medieval writing from 400-1500 A.D.

“Medieval Writing” showcases images from many types of documents including manuscripts, legal, administrative and papal documents; the website provides an in-depth analysis of each type of document and its uses during the medieval period. Secondly, “Medieval Writing” offers paleography lessons so its users can become proficient in the various book hands and document hands used from the 6th to the 16th Centuries. (From Alison Walker’s research report.)

Starter Links: Medieval Writing Website

Transliteracies Research Report By Alison Walker

Online book-tracking service that allows people to enter a “collective library” on the Internet.

“Bibliophil allows its users to keep track of their books in a customized library with public/private library security available. Users can create Buddies with trust relationships, recommend books to buddies, and keep track of recommendations. Query their library and sort by title, author, rating, date read, etc. filter by author, unrated books, unread, reviewed on loan, wish lists, and for sale. Users can also export available via Excel (CSV) and have PDA and Mobile access to their libraries.” (From Bibliophil.org.)

Starter Links: Bibliophil.org | Answers.com take on bibliophil.org as a social library

Searchable multimedia version of Beowulf.

”’The Electronic Beowulf Project’ is an image-based CD-ROM edition of Beowulf, the great Old English poem, which survives in only one manuscript: British Library Cotton Vitellius A. xv. The CD is a full-color digital facsimile of Beowulf, its associated texts, and glossaries. Future editions will include illuminations from contemporary manuscripts and external links to medieval and Anglo-Saxon resource sites.” (From Donna Beth Ellard’s Research Report.)

Starter Links: The Electronic Beowulf Project

Transliteracies Research Report By Donna Beth Ellard

Searchable, digital facsimile of the Exeter Book.

“Digital images of the Exeter Book were produced in 1996, and from these images, a “virtual manuscript” has been produced. “The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry” is edited and compiled by Bernard J. Muir and Nick Kennedy. This program is a CD set that is scheduled for production in March 2006. The CD will contain interactive facsimiles, a page viewer, codicological report, historical and cultural materials, and audio readings of the poems. (From Donna Beth Ellard’s Research Report.)

Starter Links: EVellum’s description of the project

Transliteracies Research Report By Donna Beth Ellard

Considers the implications of Marey’s graphic method as a part of the greater discourse of signification and writing systems.

“The discourse of graph may be considered to be a micro-discourse, a series of signifying practices that loosely–perhaps even unconsciously–organizes meaning not from the standpoint of a unifying discourse such as science or theology that organizes knowledge from the outside in but rather signifies a particular episteme from the inside out. The word and suffix graph appears in the names of many new technologies in the middle and late nineteenth century: photography, cinematography, cardiography, phonautograph, graphophone, heliography, telegraphy, ideograph, phonograph, seismograph, myography, etc. ...Marey’s graphic method modernized the study of physiology by helping to displace quasi-mystical theories of vitalism with a positivistic understanding of the human body. As writing, the indexical traces produced by means of the graphic method evidence a radical cultural transformation of the status of writing from transcendent signifying practice to the machinic writing of life based not upon a higher power but rather the movements of the body as machine. The graphic method takes part in a larger cultural and epistemic project of the scientific secularization of writing and inscription.” (From James J. Hodge’s Research Report.)

Starter Links and References:
Marta Braun’s. Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) | François Dagognet’s Etienne-Jules Marey: A Passion for the Trace (1987), trans. Robert Galeta with Jeanine Herman (New York: Zone Books, 1992).

Transliteracies Research Report By James J. Hodge

MUVEES: Multi-User Virtual Environment Experiential Simulator

“MUVEES are an engaging way to improve educational outcomes using museum-related multimedia and virtual environments for teaching and learning science. The purpose of this research project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is to build a multi-user virtual environment experiential simulator (MUVEES) in order to find an engaging way to teach science in a manner that draws on curiosity and play. The environment is enriched with digitized historical museum artifacts to enhance middle school students’ motivation and learning about science.” (From the MUVEES web site.)

Starter Links: MUVEES | An abstract from Museums and the Web | Paper from the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference 2003 | Related article

Digitized objects that re-configure text, sound, and images from different originals, in order to create a new, sometimes satirical or subversive, art object.

“The basic concept behind fan-made MV (music videos) is to match the rhythm (and lyrics, if using a song) of a piece of one music with the pictures from a different visual object, such that the music and pictures vitalize each other, in order to initiate a fresh mutual understanding. The resulting hybrid work offers a distinctly different art object from either of the original pieces, one that can function paradoxically as both as satire and homage.” (From Weiwei Ren’s Supplemental Research.)

Starter Links: www.youtube.com

Supplemental Research By Weiwei Ren

Online tool that allows user easy access to a dictionary of medieval Latin abbreviations.

“Abbreviationesâ„¢, the first electronic dictionary of medieval Latin abbreviations, is a powerful database designed foruse in both learning and teaching of medieval Latin paleography. Abbreviationesâ„¢ is also a highly useful reference and research tool. It consists of a database (Main Dictionary) and a database application(Abbreviationesâ„¢) — a mature, robust, and reliable program, suitable for everyone from the novice to the expert. An electronic dictionaryis immeasurably more effective than a printed dictionary in terms of speed and efficiency. Furthermore, our database currently comprises over 70,000 entries, nearly five times as many as you would find in the printed dictionaries by Walther, Chassant, De la Braña, Cappelli,and Pelzer combined. Thanks to annual updates and enhancements, theMain Dictionary will continue to grow steadily. Abbreviationesâ„¢ is a standard reference work and reflects the state of contemporaryscholarship.” (from the Abbreviations web site.)

Starter Links: Abbreviationes | Technical Information | Related Newsletter Article that mentions how “computers might actually help to make academics more productive” through this tool”

Mixed-media objects, similar to a contemporary collage, that enjoyed an indeterminate period of popularity in the visual culture of eighteenth century England.

“One of the intriguing aspects of medley prints is that so little information survives about them and correspondingly little contemporary scholarship has been published about them. An exception is Mark Hallett’s “The Medley Print in Early Eighteenth-Century London.” Although there is little scholarship on medley prints, there are a number of surviving examples.” (From Gerald Egan’s Research Report.)

Starter Links and References:
Mark Hallett’s article, “The Medley Print in Early Eighteenth-Century London,” in Art History

Transliteracies Research Report By Gerald Egan

“Information design helps people and organizations achieve understanding through the creation of relevant, clear and memorable information. ‘InfoDesign: Understanding by Design’ is dedicated to the growth and improvement of the information and experience industries through the provision of a centralized online resource that serves all interested audiences. Launched in 2004, the site will continually evolve to meet the needs and desires of its participants. ‘InfoDesign: Understanding by Design’ is a non-profit informational resource.” (from the InfoDesign website.)

Starter Links: InfoDesign

Transliteracies Research Report By Mike Godwin

“The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published the Unua Libro in 1887. Zamenhof’s goal was to create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding. Although no country has adopted the language officially, it has enjoyed continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2 million speakers. It is estimated that there are more than a thousand native speakers. Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television (Internacia Televido) and radio broadcasting. Some state education systems offer elective courses in Esperanto; there is evidence that learning Esperanto is a useful preparation for later language learning.” (from Esperanto on Wikipedia)

Starter Links: Esperanto League for N. America | Esperanto.net

MediaWiki is a free software package originally written for Wikipedia but is now run on other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and many other wikis. (from MediaWiki)

“MediaWiki is a free server-based software, that is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It’s designed to be run on a large server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day. MediaWiki is an extremely powerful, scaleable software and a feature-rich wiki implementation, that uses PHP to process and display data stored in its MySQL database. Pages use MediaWiki’s wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily. When a user submits an edit to a page, MediaWiki writes it to the database, but without deleting the previous versions of the page, thus allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming. MediaWiki can manage image and multimedia files, too, which are stored in the filesystem. For large wikis with lots of users, MediaWiki supports caching and can be easily coupled with Squid proxy server software.” (from MediaWiki’s “How does MediaWiki Work?”)

MediaWiki should not be confused with Wikimedia: “Wikimedia is the collective name for a group of inter-related projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, and others, which aim to use the collaborative power of the Internet, and the wiki concept, to create and share free knowledge of all kinds. Like “Wikipedia”, “Wikimedia” is a trademark, and should not be used for projects which are not officially affiliated. Wikimedia is also used as a shortened form of The Wikimedia Foundation.” (from MediaWiki’s “Names” page)

Starter Links: MediaWiki Homepage | List of Sites that use MediaWiki

Transliteracies Research Report By Mike Godwin

British Library projects that allows the online user to view items held in the Library’s special collections.

“Turning the Pages is the award-winning interactive program that allows museums and libraries to give members of the public access to precious books while keeping the originals safely under glass. Initially developed by and for the British Library, it is now available as a service for institutions and private collectors around the world.

Turning the Pages allows visitors to virtually ‘turn’ the pages of manuscripts in a realistic way, using touch-screen technology and interactive animation. They can zoom in on the high- quality digitised images and read or listen to notes explaining the beauty and significance of each page. There are other features specific to the individual manuscripts. In a Leonardo da Vinci notebook, for example, a button turns the text round so visitors can read his famous ‘mirror’ handwriting.” (From the Project’s web site.)

Starter Links: Turning the Pages | BBC article on their digitization of Mozart’s diaries as part of the project | BBC article about their digitization of what was to become Alice in Wonderland

Organization devoted to increasing online reading materials.

“The OCKHAM Initiative seeks to promote the development of digital libraries via collaboration between librarians and digital library researchers. By promoting simple, open approaches and standards for digital library tools, services, and content, the gap between digital library development and the adoption of digital library systems by the traditional library community will be bridged.

To this end, the OCKHAM Initiative received a $425K grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a network of services that will improve the deployability of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) in traditional libraries. This grant will produce the initial OCKHAM Network – a suite of interoperable digital library services for use by traditional libraries.” (From The Ockham Initiative.)

Starter Links: Information from D-Lib | The Ockham Initiative

Rewritable thermal recording material developed by Mitsubishi Paper Mills Limited.

“Unlike other rewritable systems, e.g., transparent-opaque types, Thermo Rewrite uses Leuco dye in a coloring/decoloring process for its imaging (Thermo Rewrite is therefore classified as a Leuco type rewritable material). This primary difference from other rewritable materials allows a high-contrast and high-resolution image. Toughness is also a big advantage of Thermo Rewrite. With the use of an adequate printer set, a print/erase durability of more than one thousand times would be possible. Thanks to these great advantages, Thermo Rewrite is expected to be used not only for card applications but also for various other fields.” (From Mitsubishi Paper Mills Ltd.)

Starter Links: Mitsubishi Paper Mill’s Thermo Rewrite | Wikipedia entry on Leuco Dye

Processing is a java-based image programming language and development environment that strives to be easy for non-programmers to learn, yet powerful enough to utilize the range of java libraries.

“Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.” (from Processing.org)

Starter Links: Processing.org | Processing Blogs | ProcessingHacks.com

Edubuntu is a Linux-based operating system that specifically targets young adults and families in an educational context.

”’Ubuntu’ is an ancient African word, meaning ‘humanity to others’. Ubuntu also means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Edubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to schools, through its customised school environment.

Edubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with community based support. The Edubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Edubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. These freedoms make Edubuntu fundamentally different from traditional proprietary software: not only are the tools you need available free of charge, you have the right to modify your software until it works the way you want it to.” (from Edubuntu.org)

Starter Links: Edubuntu.org | Ubuntu.org (the parent project) | Jay Allen’s review: “Is Edubuntu Truly the Operating System for Families?” on BloggingBaby.com

News portal site from Inform Technologies LLC that uses advanced algorithms to sift news, blogs, audio, and video; analyzes them according to structure and relationships through “polytope” mathematical/geometrical relations; and then “channels” the results adaptively (according to evolving “discovery paths”) for particular readers:

“Inform is creating a free online tool that we believe will revolutionize how people read news on the web. We not only provide thousands of news sources, including blogs, video, and audio, in a convenient single interface, we process the news for you, allowing you to get at what you’re interested in more quickly, intelligently, and comprehensively.

Inform’s differentiating technology uses a series of information structuring techniques and natural-language interpretation to auto-categorize and group news stories into thousands of categories, and then shreds the text of the stories to isolate the important elements of each. Once the elements have been identified, you can easily connect and read news on any person, place, organization, topic, industry or product quickly, successfully, and easily right from the article you’re reading, or by utilizing a custom news channel you create, all for free.” (from “About Us” on Inform.com site)

Starter Links: Inform.com | Business Week article discussing Inform.com and related, math-driven information and business technologies (.pdf)

Transliteracies Research Report By Lisa Swanstrom

Online organization devoted to enabling political action and mobilization through Internet activity and communication.

“The MoveOn family of organizations brings real Americans back into the political process. With over 3.3 million members across America — from carpenters to stay-at-home moms to business leaders — we work together to realize the progressive vision of our country’s founders. MoveOn is a service — a way for busy but concerned citizens to find their political voice in a system dominated by big money and big media.

The MoveOn family of organizations is made up of a couple of different pieces. MoveOn.org Civic Action, a 501©(4) nonprofit organization, formerly known just as MoveOn.org, primarily focuses on education and advocacy on important national issues. MoveOn.org Political Action, a federal PAC, formerly known as MoveOn PAC, mobilizes people across the country to fight important battles in Congress and help elect candidates who reflect our values. Both organizations are entirely funded by individuals. ” (from MoveOn.org)

Starter Links: MoveOn.org | “MoveOn Moves Up,” Michelle Goldberg’s article on Salon.com

History and Description of the Mechanics’ Institute

“The Mechanics’ Institute sprang up in 19th century England for the ostensible purpose of imparting upon the working class mechanic knowledge of the sciences, literature, and arts. In actuality, a myriad of purposes shrouded the creation of these institutes, which were ultimately appropriated by the middle class when it became apparent that the working class was not as receptive as had been anticipated. Some scholars conjecture that they were really formed as a means of control and indoctrination of the working class, allowing only as little real knowledge as needed for them to improve as workers, but little else. As the middle class began to move in, the working class retreated to the Institute’s libraries and reading rooms, where they were free to discuss topics that interested them.”

Starter Links or References: “Funding communal culture: opportunism and standardisation of funding for mechanics’ institutes in colonial Victoria,” Donald Barker’s article in The Australian Library Journal | “Culture and Wealth Creation: Mechanics’ Institutes and the Emergence of Political Economy in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain,â€? Ann Firth’s article in the History of Intellectual Culture

Transliteracies Research Report By David Roh

15th-18th century chidren’s primers made of paper, a transparent sheet of animal horn, and a wood base.

“It may not look like one, but a hornbook is really a book. Paper was pretty expensive once and hornbooks were made so children could learn to read without using a lot of paper. A hornbook was usually a small, wooden paddle with just one sheet of paper glued to it. But because that paper was so expensive, parents and teachers wanted to protect it. So they covered the paper with a very thin piece of cow’s horn. The piece of cow’s horn was so thin, you could see right through it. That’s why these odd books were called ‘hornbooks.’” (From Blackwell’s History of Education Web Site.)

Starter Links: Blackwell’s About the Hornbook | Definition of the Hornbook on Bartleby.com

Reading “generator” that makes use of mySQL and associative linking.

Synapsen, a mySQL-based card system for notes and quotes and biblio-references, automagically connects and thus “generates” readings (once a certain critical mass of entries is achieved). Aristotle already recommended excerpts to serious readers…Here, the old card index that served scholars from Locke and Hegel to Levi-Strauss, Barthes, and Luhmann transitions into the computer. In a simple way, this system attempts to implement the vision articulated by HG Wells, Paul Otlet, Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson, and Apple Hypercard: it runs a SQL database, it can access data from OPACs, and its main strength is automatic associative linking—something no biblio-software offers yet. It allows manual and automatic cross-referencing; of course it also outputs bibliographies, footnotes, etc. It’s available for Windows, Unix, Mac OS X, and Linux, and contains a comfortable interface for LaTeX users via BiBTeX. To install, you need to have a Java Virtual Machine and mySQL 4.1+ The English version will be available in a few weeks. (from Peter Krapp’s description of the project.)

Starter Links: Synspsen

Extensive project that aims to provide researchers with primary and secondary material in the broad category of medieval and modern thought. This project uses a book-scanning robot to help digitize its material.

“To strengthen Stanford University Library holdings in the field of Western Medieval thought and its influence on modern times. The goal is to digitize on an ongoing basis printed reference works, source collections, and primary and secondary books in the broad area of medieval and modern thought.” (From the project’s web site.)

Starter Links: Medieval and Modern Thought Text Digitization Project | “Robots Digitizing Libraries,” San Francisco Chronicle article about robots used to scan books | “SULAIR Has Robot for Digitizing Books,” SULAIR e-newsletter about scanning robots

Online service that manages access to archives of hundreds of academic journals, across disciplines.

“Coverage of 22,000 journals, 23 million patents, 12,000 conference proceedings, 5,500 Web sites, 5,000 books, 2 million chemical structures, and now scholarly Web content via the Web Citation Index.â€? (from About ISI Web of Knowledge.)

Starter Links: ISI Web of Knowledge

Online resource manages access to archives of hundreds of academic journals, across disciplines.

“JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a dual mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals, and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. JSTOR offers researchers the ability to retrieve high-resolution, scanned images of journal issues and pages as they were originally designed, printed, and illustrated. Content in JSTOR spans many disciplines. ” (from JSTOR.)

Starter Links: JSTOR

Software program that organizes large lists of citations to help researchers sort the terrain of the literature.

“With this powerful text analysis and visualization software program, you get an intuitive framework for exploring reference collections based on content. RefViz provides an at-a-glance overview and reveals trends and associations in references–now you can retain important references otherwise lost when narrowing a search or skimming a list.â€? (from the Product Info page.)

Starter Links: Refviz

Collaborative online knowledge base that allows readers and users to contribute to and edit its encyclopedic-like entries.

“The content of Wikipedia is free, written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit entries simply by clicking on the edit this page link. Begun in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet…Because Wikipedia is an ongoing work to which anybody with Internet access can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in some very important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles may still contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this in order to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation which has been recently added and not yet removed.” (from Wikipedia)

Starter Links: Wikipedia.org | Article about the contraversial use of wikis

Transliteracies Research Report By Kim Knight