Imaging Project
Squeeze Collection
Equipment
Work has continued during the winter and early spring on the imaging project described in Newsletter no. 1. Progress on the project has been facilitated by the availability of an ftp facility on the University's new Hierarchical File Server, which will provide secure and sufficient storage for backing up and maintaining the image bank for many years to come. Sheelagh Treweek of the Computing Service has provided invaluable support in establishing this service and the Centre is particularly grateful to her for her assistance.
The Centre's WWW site now has more than 60 sample images of inscriptions, in resolutions of 72 or 150 dpi, available for viewing and downloading. The growing size of this library of images will soon outreach the resources available to the Centre on the University's Sable Internet server. For this reason, the Centre will be establishing its own Internet server during the summer. When this becomes available, the list of images in geographical and chronological order and minimal catalogue entries currently provided will be replaced by a more responsive and informative catalogue system. A reorganisation and redesign of the whole of the Centre's WWW site will be carried out at the same time.
The Centre's squeeze collection has recently been strengthened by Dr. Susan Sherwin-White's decision to deposit her collection of squeezes of Koan, Athenian and Seleucid (example illustrated below) inscriptions in the Centre, together with her notebooks, photographs and elegant transcriptions. Dr. Sherwin- White's squeeze collection includes about 300 Koan items and is now being catalogued. The collection is available for study to interested scholars. Enquiries about the availability of particular items should be directed to Dr. Crowther at the Centre.
The Centre has acquired a Leaf Lumina digital scanning camera
with the balance of the grant made available by the University's
Research and Equipment Committee. The Leaf Lumina was supplied
with a slide and film scanning attachment, which has made it possible
to begin digitising the Centre's growing photographic archive.
The Leaf Lumina's value as a camera is described elsewhere in
the Newsletter in Dorothy Thompson's report on "Digitising
a Lycopolite Census". The Centre has also acquired a Plasmon
CD Recorder from the research funds provided by the HRB Institutional
Fellowship reported in Newsletter no. 1. This will make it possible
to archive and distribute collections of digitised images - for
example, those collected for the Corpus of Dated Byzantine Inscriptions.
70 scholars from 12 countries working in the diverse branches of medieval epigraphy gathered at St Hilda's College in Oxford between March 28 and March 31 for an International Conference on Medieval Epigraphy, organised around the theme "The Insular World and Europe". Participants from the Conference visited the Centre on the afternoon of 29 March, for a demonstration of the Centre's resources and a discussion of common interests. One of the highlights of the Conference was a demonstration of the skills of a modern stonemason by Richard Kindersley followed by a discussion of their relevance to the study of ancient inscriptions. The growing use of Information Technology in the study of medieval inscriptions and the digitisation of texts and images played a prominent role in the Conference. Professor Jost Gippert of Frankfurt University demonstrated his evolving Internet Corpus of Ogham inscriptions and Dr. Espen Ore of the University of Bergen presented a preliminary version of a database of Runic inscriptions incorporating the results of image analysis carried out with the NIH Image programme. Cross-references to both Professor Gippert's and Dr. Ore's WWW sites are now available here and from the Centre's home page.
The Conference was jointly organised by Katherine Forsyth of St.
Hilda's College and John Higgitt of the Department of Fine Art,
University of Edinburgh.
A summer school will be held at the Centre in Oxford under the
auspices of the Association International de Papyrologues during
the first half of July, 1997. The school will be directed by Dr.
A.K.Bowman, Dr. R.A.Coles, Dr. D.Obbink and Prof. P.J. Parsons
and will offer practical instruction to advanced undergraduates
and graduate students, drawing on material in the Oxyrhynchus
collection. Those interested in obtaining further details about
participation and fees are asked to contact Dr. Obbink as soon
as possible (Dr. D. Obbink, Christ Church, Oxford OX1 1DP; email:
dirk.obbink@christ-church.oxford.ac.uk)
The fund created to commemorate the work of the late Professor D.M. Lewis (as reported in Newsletter no. 1) has now reached £20,000.
The time and venue for the first David Lewis Lecture, to be given
by Professor M. Jameson, Crossett Professor of Humanities Emeritus
at Stanford University, on the subject of "The Rituals of
Athena Polias in Athens", have now been finalised. The lecture
will take place on Wednesday, 29 May at 5.00 p.m. in the Garden
Quad Auditorium of St. John's College and will be followed by
a reception in the Foyer adjoining the Auditorium.
Professor J.N. Adams of Reading University will be giving a seminar
paper, jointly sponsored by St. John's College and the Centre
at 5.00 p.m. on 16 May in St. John's College, with the title "Latin
Written in Greek Script. Some Aspects of Bilingualism and Literacy
in the Roman Empire". There will be drinks after the seminar.
Further information can be obtained from Nicholas Purcell at St.
John's College (e-mail: nicholas.purcell@sjc.ox.ac.uk).
This page was created on 18 April 1996