Monday, June 29, 2009

Academic Social Network: Academia.edu

Go to academia.edu and build (or update) your profile. Encourage your students, colleagues and teachers to do so as well. Those of you whose institutions have an inadequate repostitory (or lack one altogether) can deposit your scholarly writing as a part of their profile on academia.edu.

Once you have a profile, find me at one or another of my manifestations there (merging of profiles for those with appopintments a more than one institution or department is an issue they are working on solving), and add me as a contact.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Eleven additional books from the Oriental Institute available in Open Access

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Open Access: Bulletin of the School of Classical Studies at Athens

The Internet Archive has surfaced early issues of the Bulletin of the School of Classical Studies at Athens.



I have added these to :

AWOL - The Ancient World Online - 5: Publications of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens are available online in open access formats

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

JURN. Access to free ejournals in the arts & humanities

JURN is a curated academic search-engine, indexing 3,154 free ejournals in the arts & humanities.
JURN is a search-engine indexing free ‘open access’ ejournals in the arts and humanities, along with other arts and scholarly journals offering free content.

How do I use it? You can use it just like Google. JURN is running on a Google Custom Search; so JURN is speedy, and you can use all the usual Google search modifers, such as intitle:”your phrase” and filetype:pdf But I assume the typical user will have an adequate grasp of the best ways to search Google, and will thus also have some idea of the exact terms they need to use. For example, a unsophisticated search for…

Gender Studies Shakespeare

…will only obtain an interesting but very broad overview, while a search such as such as…

intitle:”The Tempest” gender

… will return much more specific results.

In the right hand sidebar of AWOL (those of you reading this in feed aggregators or by email will need to click through to see this) is a search box giving access to the data curated by JURN.

Is it useful? Leave a comment

Thursday, June 18, 2009

New Ancient World Content in JSTOR

The following journals have been added to the JSTOR archive since the last update in AWOL:

The Annual of the British School at Athens (Arts & Sciences V)
Release Content:
Vols. 1- 98 (1894/1895 - 2003)
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: The British School at Athens
ISSN: 0068-2454
Kerry Archaeological Magazine (Ireland)
Release Content:
1908 - 1918 (Vols. 1 - 4)
Publication of this title ceased in 1918.
Publisher: Kerry Archaeology Magazine
ISSN: 2009-1362
Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur (Arts & Sciences V)
Release Content:
Bde. 1- 31 (1974-2003)
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: Helmut Buske Verlag GmbH
ISSN: 0340-2215


Previously missing issues:

Ars Islamica (Arts & Sciences V)
Release Content:
Vol. 2, No. 2 (1935);
Vol. 3, Nos. 1-2 (1936);
Vol. 4 (1937)
Moving Wall: N/A
Publisher: The Smithsonian Institution and the Regents of the University of Michigan
ISSN: 1939-6406
Note: Ars Islamica is the previous title to Ars Orientalis.
Classical Philology (Arts & Sciences II)
Release Content:
Vol. 84, No. 4 (October, 1989)
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISSN: 0009-837X
The Classical Weekly (Arts & Sciences VII)
Release Content:
Vol. 17, Nos. 1-14, 18-27 (1923 - 1924);
Vol. 19, Nos. 1-4, 7-16, 20 (1925 - 1926)
Moving Wall: N/A
Publisher: Classical Association of the Atlantic States
ISSN: 1940-641X
Note: The Classical Weekly is the previous title to The Classical World.
Transactions of the American Philological Association (Arts & Sciences II)
Release Content:
Vol. 131 (2001)
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ISSN: 0360-5949

The following new content has been added to the Aluka collections.

The Heinz Rüther Collection

The cultural heritage site, Great Zimbabwe, has been added to the Heinz Rüther Collection. 831 digital objects, including 3D models, aerial photographs, and high-resolution photographs, have been added to the more than 7,000 geo-spatial objects and images already available. This adds to already extensive documentation of cultural heritage sites and landscapes from across Africa documented by Prof. Rüther and his team at the University of Cape Town.

By about 1270, a wealthy elite emerged at Great Zimbabwe and started laying the foundations for an elaborate urban complex than grew into state that traded in gold, ivory, cloth, and glass beads with the Swahili city states along the Indian Ocean coast. At its peak in the 14th and 15th centuries, Great Zimbabwe was one of the largest cities in sub-Saharan Africa, a metropolis of more than 700 hectares composed of elite residences, ritual centres, public forums, markets, and the houses of commoners and artisans. Great Zimbabwe was added to World Heritage List by UNESCO in 1986.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Papyrological Navigator Update

The Papyrological Navigator

From an announcement on PAPY:
Colleagues:

The Papyrological Navigator now resides at New York University.
Functionality remains the same. It is improved in many places, and minor
corrections associated with the migration are in process, but it is the
same PN.

Earlier bookmarks may not work.

Start at http://papyri.info and click "Search the Navigator" or else go
straight to http://papyri.info/navigator/search

Please feel free to send feedback on functionality to Hugh Cayless
(hugh dot cayless at nyu dot edu)

All best,
Josh Sosin, Rodney Ast, James Cowey


Twenty six more Oriental Institute publications online open access

OIP 3. The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, Volume 1: Hieroglyphic Transliteration, Translation, and Commentary. By J. H. Breasted. Oriental Institute Publications 3. 1930

OIP 4. The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, Volume 2: Facsimile Plates and Line for Line Hieroglyphic Transliteration. By J. H. Breasted. Oriental Institute Publications 4. 1930

OIP 17. Paleolithic Man and the Nile-Faiyum Divide in Nubia and Upper Egypt: A Study of the Region during Pliocene and Pleistocene Times. By K. S. Sandford and W. J. Arkell. Oriental Institute Publications 17, Prehistoric Survey of Egypt and Western Asia II. 1933

OIP 34. The Egyptian Coffin Texts 1: Texts of Spells 1-75. By Adriaan de Buck. Oriental Institute Publications 34. 1935

SAOC 33. Late Ramesside Letters. By Edward F. Wente. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 33. 1967

SAOC 34. A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts. By Louis V. Zabkar. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 34. 1968

SAOC 35. Studies in Honor of John A. Wilson. Edited by E. B. Hauser. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 35. 1969. Kindly note that this volume is also available in print.

SAOC 39. Studies in Honor of George R. Hughes, January 12, 1977. Edited by Janet H. Johnson and Edward F. Wente. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 39. 1976. Kindly note that this volume is also available in print.

SAOC 40. Ancient Egyptian Coregencies. By William J. Murnane. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 40. 1977

SAOC 47. Essays in Ancient Civilization Presented to Helene J. Kantor. Edited by Albert Leonard Jr. and Bruce B. Williams. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 47. 1989. Kindly note that this volume is also available in print.

SAOC 48. Egyptian Phyles in the Old Kingdom: The Evolution of a System of Social Organization. By Ann Macy Roth. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 48. 1991

SAOC 51. Life in a Multi-Cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond. Edited by Janet Johnson. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 51. 1992. Kindly note that this volume was already available; the replacement PDF file is created from a better scan.

SAOC 52. A Late Period Hieratic Wisdom Text (P. Brooklyn 47.218.135). By Richard Jasnow. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 52. 1992. Kindly note that this volume is also available in print.

SAOC 55. For His Ka: Essays Offered in Memory of Klaus Baer. Edited by D. P. Silverman. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 55. 1994

SAOC 56. Portrait Mummies from Roman Egypt (I-IV Centuries A.D.) with a Catalog of Portrait Mummies in Egyptian Museums. By Lorelei H. Corcoran. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 56. 1995

SAOC 57. The Presentation of Maat: Ritual and Legitimacy in Ancient Egypt. By Emily Teeter. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 57. 1997

SAOC 58. Gold of Praise: Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente. Edited by Emily Teeter and John A. Larson. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 58. 2000. Kindly note that this volume is also available in print.

MISC. The Burden of Egypt: An Interpretation of Ancient Egyptian Culture. By John A. Wilson. Oriental Institute Essay. 1951

MISC. The Culture of Ancient Egypt. By John A. Wilson. Oriental Institute Essay. Phoenix Edition 1956. Kindly note that this title was first published under the title The Burden of Egypt: An Interpretation of Ancient Egyptian Culture (1951).

MISC. Quseir Al-Qadim 1978: Preliminary Report. By D. S. Whitcomb and J. H. Johnson. 1979

MISC. Quseir al-Qadim 1980: Preliminary Report. By Donald S. Whitcomb and Janet H. Johnson. American Research Center in Egypt Reports 7. 1982

MISC. Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature. By Henri Frankfort, with a new Preface by Samuel Noah Kramer. Oriental Institute Essay. 1948

MISC. Most Ancient Egypt. By William C. Hayes, edited by Keith C. Seele. 1965

MISC. Ancient Egyptian Paintings Selected, Copied, and Described, Volume III: Descriptive Text. By Nina M. Davies with the editorial assistance of Alan H. Gardiner. 1936

MISC. When Egypt Ruled the East. By George Steindorff and Keith C. Seele, revised by Keith C. Seele. 1957

MISC. Ancient Textiles from Nubia: Meroitic, X-Group, and Christian Fabrics from Ballana and Qustul. By Christa C. Mayer Thurman and Bruce Williams. 1979

Monday, June 15, 2009

Open Access Journal: Bulletin of the Society for East Asian Archaeology (BSEAA)

Bulletin of the Society for East Asian Archaeology (BSEAA)
online version:ISSN 1864-6018
print version: ISSN 1864-6026
The 'Bulletin of the Society for East Asian Archaeology (BSEAA)' (ISSN 1864-6018, print version: ISSN 1864-6026) was initiated in March 2007. It provides a means of publishing smaller manuscripts such as field reports, project outlines, conference reports and papers, book reviews, museum roundups etc., as well as essays on issues in East Asian archaeology. The contributions appear online at varying intervals over the year. BSEAA is an open access publication, with the exception of a 3-months preview period for SEAA members and author.
BSEAA 1 (2007) and BSEAA 2 (2008) are online at the moment.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies (GRBS) Going Open Access

The Editors of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies (GRBS) [ISSN 0017-3916] have issued the following announcement:
Volume 49 (2009) will be the last volume of GRBS printed on paper. Beginning with volume 50, issues will be published quarterly on-line on the GRBS website, on terms of free access. We undertake this transformation in the hope of affording our authors a wider readership; out of concern for the financial state of our libraries; and in the belief that the dissemination of knowledge should be free.

The current process of submission and peer-review of papers will continue unchanged. The on-line format will be identical with our pages as now printed, and so articles will continue to be cited by volume, year, and page numbers.

Our hope is that both authors and readers will judge this new medium to be to their advantage, and that such open access will be of benefit to continuing scholar¬ship on Greece.

– The editors
This is an excellent move and they are to be congratulated!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Individual Access to The American Council of Learned Societies Humanities E-Books

Having recently discussed access to digital resources by scholars who are unaffiliated with a subscribing/licensing institution with respect to members of the the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), I received the following notification on Monday from the American Council of Learned Societies Humanities E-Books Project:
HEB is now pleased to make individual subscriptions available through standing membership in any of the 70 ACLS constituent societies.

The subscription offers unlimited access to 2,200 cross-searchable, full-text titles across the humanities and related social sciences. Titles have been selected and peer reviewed by ACLS constituent learned societies for their continued value in teaching and researching, and approximately 500 are being added each year. The collection includes both in- and out-of-print titles ranging from the 1880s through 2009. Titles link to publishers websites and to online reviews in JSTOR, Project MUSE, and other sites. Individual subscriptions are USD $35.00 for a twelve-month subscription.

Individual subscriptions are ideal for those whose school might not yet have an institutional subscription to HEB or for individual members of a learned society who might not be affiliated with a subscribing institution.

Please see the links below for more information on individual subscriptions.

Online Purchase

Terms
ACLS constituent societies of particular relevance for ancient studies include
Taking advantage of this offer allows the unaffiliated scholar access to 2,200 fully searchable full-text titles offered by the ACLS in collaboration with fourteen learned societies and nearly 100 contributing publishers.

The Virtual Museum of Iraq is Online

The Virtual Museum of Iraq

The Virtual Museum of Iraq was unveiled yesterday in Italy. Available in Arabic, English and Italian, the Virtual Museum of Iraq offers visitors the opportunity to move through eight virtual galleries and see highlights from the collection from the prehistoric to the Islamic period. Animated videoclips provide details.

For a news feature on the virtual museum see Italy puts Baghdad Museum online, (ANSA) - Rome, June 9
The treasures of Baghdad's National Museum went online for the first time Tuesday as Italy inaugurated the Virtual Museum of Iraq as part of an ongoing cultural collaboration between the two countries.

Looted during the United States-led invasion in 2003, the Baghdad Museum partially reopened in February after six years but the website is designed to make its most important artefacts accessible to everyone...


As far as I can tell there are no reciprocal links between The Virtual Museum of Iraq and The Iraq Museum, which is understood to be the official web presence of the Museum and the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) updates

Late last week, the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) added three new data sets:

From announcements circulated by CDLI:
Images of nearly all mathematical tablets kept at Jena are now available online through the CDLI database. The images were produced as part of the publication Tablettes mathématiques de la collection Hilprecht (C. Proust with the collaboration of M. Krebernik and J. Oelsner) = TMH 8 (2008), and were batch-processed to CDLI standard format by UCLA staff.

New images of mathematical tablets from Nippur kept at Istanbul have also been added to CDLI. Like the Jena files, the photographs of the Istanbul texts prepared for CD insertion in the publication Tablettes mathematiques de Nippur (C. Proust; 2007) were processed for web at UCLA...

Please see Proust, "Numerical and Metrological Graphemes: From Cuneiform to Transliteration," CDLJ 2009/1, for a description of plans to include, in the standard format of an alliance of online cuneiform projects led by CDLI and ePSD, transliterations of all cuneiform metrological and mathematical texts.
and
The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, in partnership with the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California, is pleased to announce the addition of new digital content to its web offerings.

In March of this year, two UCLA staff members of the project (Brumfield and Heinle) scanned 148 San Jose tablets, and processed the tablet surface images according to CDLI's "fat-cross" standards to complement the SET (Sumerian Economic Texts from the Third Ur Dynasty) publication of Rosicrucian and other US tablet collections published in 1961 by Tom B. Jones and John W. Snyder in transliteration only; collations of the REM tablets in SET were subsequently published by M. Cooper in 1986 (ASJ 8, 309-344) and by J. Carnahan and K. Hillard in 1993 and 1994 (ASJ 15, 246-251; ASJ 16, 310). Bob Englund posted these images to web this week; the entire REM collection can be accessed here.

This digital imaging was supported by a National Leadership Grant for Libraries - Building Digital Resources from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and is part of the on-going mission of CDLI to ensure the long-term preservation of texts inscribed on endangered cuneiform tablets, and to provide free global access to all available text artifact data in furtherance of cuneiform research.

The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) represents the efforts of an international group of Assyriologists, museum curators and historians of science to make available through the internet the form and content of cuneiform tablets dating from the beginning of writing, ca. 3350 BC, until the end of the pre-Christian era. We estimate the number of these documents currently kept in public and private collections to exceed 500,000 exemplars, of which now nearly 225,000 have been catalogued in electronic form by the CDLI.

CDLI also produces a variety of other essential resources.

Three journals
Who's Who in Cuneiform Studies
List of standard abbreviations for Assyriology

and more.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Blog changes

I've made two small changes to the blog over the weekend. If you're reading this in a feed reader or by email you may not see them, so if that's the case, click the link and go AWOL.

In the righthand side bar I now have added the widget delivering the feed from Abzu. Abzu is a partner project to this blog. Not everything that appears here appears there, and vice versa. Abzu's focus is on the ancient Near East and Mediterranan world, and AWOL's focus is the ancient world more broadly conceived. It's easy enough to follow both if you wish to.

Also in the righthand side bar is a form allowing you to receive notifications of updates to AWOL by email. This seems useful for those for whom news feeds are not. Your address will be safe. Neither AWOL nor feedburner will send spam. I have been testing it for some weeks and I'm satisfied that it works reliably.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Access to the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology at JSTOR

[Links updated 27 January 2012]

Having posted a message in May about the availability of ASOR journals at JSTOR, I am informed that a similar arrangement has been made by the Egypt Exploration Society . Members of the society who do not have institutional access to JSTOR can now have access to the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology on JSTOR as an add-on the EES membership. Volumes 1 (1914) - 92 (2006) are currently accessible - there is a five year moving wall.

I can also point you to the EES library catalogue online.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

President Barack Obama's visit to Giza in Egypt and Open Access Egyptian Archaeology

Earlier today, as the world knows, President Barack Obama gave an important speech at Cairo University. On this same day, he was given a tour of Giza by the ubiquitous Zahi Hawass. In addition to the usual tour of the pyramids and the Sphinx, he was privileged to visit the tomb of Qar, a small Dynasty 6 subterranean chapel with engaged statuary on the east side of the Great Pyramid. This tomb, numbered G 7101, was excavated in 1924-25 by the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition. As luck would have it this tomb is quite completely documented and published in an open access publication from the Giza Archives project, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:
William Kelly Simpson

Giza Mastabas Vol. 2:

The Mastabas of Qar and Idu

Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1976



Needless to say, luck has nothing at all to do with it. Peter Der Manuelian and his team have been working for years to organize and provide open access to the archaeological record of the excavations at Giza. For the full documentary record, go to the Giza Archives project page and enter "G 7101" in the search box.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Open Access Mandate at University College London

I don't generally remark on institutions adopting Open Access Policies because it isn't really within the scope of this blog, but UCL's announcement today: UCL to implement Open Access policy to all research is interesting for a couple of reasons. First among these is the fact that a publication within Ancient Studies is the most frequently downloaded document at UCL Eprints with nearly three times as many downloads as the runner-up.

Smelik, W. (2001) Sources for manuscripts of Targumic literature in public collections. Selective bibliography: catalogues.
Hard to believe!

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Academic Social Network: Academia.edu

Academia.edu

Academia.edu does two things:
  • It displays academics around the world in a tree format, according to what university/department they are affiliated with.

  • It enables an academic to have an easy-to-maintain academic webpage. A sample page on Academia.edu is here: http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardPrice

Open Access Monographs from Éditions Rue d’Ulm/Presses de l’École normale supérieure

Éditions Rue d’Ulm/Presses de l’École normale supérieure has 47 open access monographs online. The following eight deal with the ancient world.

1. Armée romaine et provinces I
2. Armée romaine et provinces II
3. Cisalpine gauloise du IIIe au Ier siècle avant J.-C. (La)
4. AUVRAY-ASSAYAS, Clara. Images romaines
5. AUVRAY-ASSAYAS, Clara; DELATTRE, Daniel. Cicéron et Philodème: La polémique en philosophie
6. BOUTET, Dominique; HARF-LANCNER, Laurence. Pour une mythologie du Moyen Âge
7. BRIQUEL, Dominique. Chrétiens et haruspices. La religion étrusque, dernier rempart du paganisme romain
8. HARF-LANCNER, Laurence. Métamorphose et bestiaire fantastique au Moyen Âge

Open Access Journal: Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis

Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis
ISSN 1583-1817
Publisher: Institutul pentru Cercetarea si Valorificarea Patrimoniului
Cultural Transilvanean in Context European
Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis publishes Central European archaeological
research.
Content in English.
Editor:
prof.univ.dr. Sabin Adrian LUCA
Email: sabinadrian.luca@ulbsibiu.ro
Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis is available free of charge as an Open Access
journal on the Internet.