Library and the Internet News from the May 2007 AAASS NewsNet

Russian Imperial Corps of Pages Online Exhibition Catalog

The catalog from an exhibit held several years ago at the Bakhmetieff Archive of Russian History and Culture of Columbia University is now available here. The site contains many images from the archive’s collection, with historical background provided by the curators.

"The Corps of Pages was a privileged military school reserved for sons of noblemen and high-ranking officers. It was founded in October 1802 by Alexander I in St. Petersburg. Except by personal appointment of the Emperor or as a son of a Major-General killed in action, admission was only by a difficult competitive examination. Only the sons or grandsons of those in the top three levels of the Table of Rank were eligible to apply. All graduates were assigned to the imperial regiment of their choice. A small percentage of graduates entered the diplomatic or civil services."

The exhibition was prepared by Tanya Chebotarev, curator of the Bakhmeteff Archive, and Marvin Lyons, Executive Secretary of the Vorontsov Palace and Corps of Pages Memorial Trust.

[Reported by Vera Beljakova, Johannesburg]

Book of Russian Idioms

M.I. Dubrovin has created an online book of Russian idioms illustrated by V.I. Tilman. The book "is intended primarily for English speaking students of Russian who have a knowledge of the essentials of Russian grammar and are familiar with a basic Russian vocabulary" (from the Preface). Each entry contains the idiom in the original Russian, an illustration dramatizing its meaning, a transliterated version of the idiom and an explanation of its meaning. In some cases, similar idioms are suggested.

[Reported by Josh Wilson, Asst. Director, The School of Russian and Asian Studies]

Basic Multilingual Dictionary Available Online

A dictionary which can translate words between English, Belorussian, Polish, and Ukrainian is available at slovnyk.org. The dictionary's portal is designed in the minimalist style of Google and the search engine appears to return a translation (sometimes several), without the regularly expected grammatical apparatus or interpretations. This seems odd since the portal bills itself as an "explanatory" dictionary. Perhaps this is an indication that the dictionary is still in an early stage of development.

[Reported by Iryna Prykarpatska; editorial comments by Allan Urbanic]

Source for European Documents through a Wiki Community

EuroDocs is a portal to European primary historical documents now available online. While it began with Western European countries, it has recently expanded to include all of Europe. As a gated Wiki, EuroDocs relies for its data on historians, archivists, librarians, and others who are aware of the primary sources of a given European country in facsimile, transcription, or English translation and who can weave them into the portal (in a chronological order for each country).

Please consider this a call and an invitation to join the EuroDocs family to help build primary historical documentation online for the European country or countries of your choice. You can request a password by e-mailing eurodocs@byu.edu, after which you are invited to contribute as few or as many links to historical documents online as you like. Alternately, you can send links or other information to the wikimaster at the same e-mail address. Thanks for any help you can give, now or later.

[Reported by Richard Hacken; relayed by Marta Deyrup]

Slavic Digital Text Workshop 2007

The University of Illinois, as part of its Summer Research Laboratory, will present the workshop From Medieval Texts to Geo-Cultural Data (GIS): Applications in Slavic Studies for Scholars and Librarians. This year the Digital Text Workshop will be held Saturday, June 9-Tuesday, June 12, to coincide with the start of the SRL on June 11. It will follow immediately after Digital Humanities 2007, which will take place June 2-8.

The theme of the workshop is broad, and will introduce some basic techniques that underpin the application of technology in the humanities and social sciences. Humanists generally employ text encoding strategies, while social scientists employ GIS (Geographic Information System), but these two approaches are increasingly intertwined. The workshop will attempt to introduce both current practice and future possibilities.

The workshop is structured in two parts: presentations (Days 1 and 2) and lab instruction/hands-on opportunities (Days 3 and 4). It will begin with general introductions to both approaches: text encoding and GIS. It will continue with more detailed presentations on encoding medieval texts in Slavic studies, during which registrants will learn about (1) Document analysis and DTD or schema design, and (2) selected applications. On the second day, registrants will learn more about the notions underpinning geographic markup and GIS in its various applications. The day will conclude with a brief survey of current text/GIS initiatives in Slavic studies of all periods, including medieval texts.

On the last two days, registrants will move to a lab environment and receive more instruction and hands-on opportunities during which students will work with sample texts using a popular software package known as <oXygen/>. These sessions will include (1) (In-depth) Document analysis, (2) XML markup or encoding, and (3) Web publication techniques using XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations). Finally, additional GIS instruction/hands-on opportunities will also be available.

The workshop is open not only to scholars but also to librarians (who, as indicated by the expansion of GIS positions in libraries, are increasingly called upon to assist faculty in the application of these various methodologies). Prof. David J. Birnbaum (U. Pittsburgh) will again serve as the main workshop presenter.