The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.2029  Monday, 20 October 2003

[1]     From:   Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 17 Oct 2003 13:10:08 +0100
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.2026 All Holinshed Online

[2]     From:   Al Magary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Friday, 17 Oct 2003 13:07:17 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.2026 All Holinshed Online


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Gabriel Egan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 17 Oct 2003 13:10:08 +0100
Subject: 14.2026 All Holinshed Online
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.2026 All Holinshed Online

Michael Egan (no relation) wrote

>This [the digitization image of Holinshed] has to
>be the single most useless enterprise in the history of the
>Internet. The downloads are slow to appear, unreadable,
>and almost impossible to navigate.

Speed of downloading is likely to be strongly conditioned by the
facilities at the viewer's end of the line, most importantly the speed
of one's connection to one's Internet Service Provider (ISP) and the
speed of the connection maintained by that ISP.

The images are perfectly readable on my office-standard screen (1024 x
768 pixels) at the 4x magnification and the width of the book
conveniently fits the width of the screen.  (The book, of course, is
tall and narrow while the screen is short and wide, so naturally one
can't get a whole page on the screen at once.)

This is all quite an achievement, since standard CRT and LCD screens are
currently limited to about 100 dots-per-inch and ink-on-paper, as we all
know, can achieve at least an order of magnitude better than that.

I hope Al Magary doesn't think the work is unappreciated. I for one
applaud it and would encourage other possessors of important paper
resources to make them freely available in this way.

Gabriel Egan

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Al Magary <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 17 Oct 2003 13:07:17 -0700
Subject: 14.2026 All Holinshed Online
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.2026 All Holinshed Online

As a user of Penn's facsimiles (Hall's Chronicle is also online; see
list below), I'm unhappy that Michael Egan is unhappy...but I wonder if
he's unhappy with Penn or with his own computer setup.

Until a few days ago I had only a dialup connection of about 49K, and,
yes, the Internet was often like molasses--sweet but slow.  Now I have a
(TV) cable connection of 1.7MB and my mood has improved considerably.
But now I notice that my turn-of-the-century PC doesn't have enough
memory or graphics capacity to cope, and that leavens my mood.

But I am terribly grateful to Penn (and the NEH, too) for their fine
efforts to put much of the primary material of the English Renaissance
online, for free.  A b&w photocopy of several chapters of Sir Henry
Ellis' Holinshed once upon a time cost me considerable.  Now, for free,
I can see every little type nick and paper pore in beautiful color
facsimiles.

Hall's Chronicle (1550) has of course been online for some time but the
facsimile set has recently been replaced with a higher-resolution set.
Hall begins at
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?TextID=halle&PagePosition=1

SCETI also has these historical titles of interest:

--Samuel Daniel, Collection of the History of England (1621):
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?textID=daniel_collection&PagePosition=1

--Samuel Daniel, The Ciuile wares betweene the Howses of Lancaster and
Yorke (1609):
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?textID=daniel_civil&PagePosition=1

--John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1610)--2 vols.:
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?textID=foxe_actes_book1&PagePosition=1

--Sir Thomas More, three editions of Edward V/Richard III-index page:
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/advancedSearch.cfm?author=More,_Thomas,_Sir,_Saint,_1478-1535&CollectionID=furness&visited=furnessAuthor

--John Stow, Survey of London (1618):
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?textID=stow&PagePosition=1

--Mirror for Magistrates (1610) is represented right now only by Richard
Niccols' Queen Cordelia:
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?textID=mirour_selections&PagePosition=1

Teachers should look into ERIC--English Renaissance In Context:
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/furness/eric/index.html The blurb
says, "ERIC comprises two separate but integrated units: a set of
tutorials on some of Shakespeare's plays and on the making and selling
of books during the Early Modern period; and a database of scanned
texts..."  Contributors to the tutorials include a couple of names
familiar to this list.

There's a lot of Shakespeare online, too, including the first folio:
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?TextID=firstfolio&PagePosition=3

If the access cost to me is further upgrading of my computer, I say, I'm
on my way to the computer store right now.

Cheers,
Al Magary
Hall's Chronicle Project

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