WESS Newsletter
Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring, 1996)
Column Editor: Gail Hueting
NOTE: links are those in effect at the time of publication and are not systematically updated.
Like the field of classical studies, scholars in medieval studies have developed a large number of electronic resources. Tom Izbicki (MdBJ) and Charles Spornick (GEU ) put together an overview of these resources for the WESS General Discussion Group at the Midwinter Meeting. Here is a small selection of the World Wide Web sites featured in their presentation:
Labyrinth is the largest and best-maintained web site for medieval studies and provides the most links to other sites of interest to medievalists. The co-directors are Deborah Everhart and Martin Irvine (DGU). URL: http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth
HN Source at the University of Kansas is a “list of lists.” The main list is searchable alphabetically by topic, by subject tree, and by country or epoch. This site is maintained by Lynn Nelson. URL: http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/history/hnsource_main.html. The same server offers a list of bibliographies for medieval studies, also by Nelson. http://kuhttp.cc.ukans/edu/ftp/pub/history/Europe/Medieval/ bibliographies/
Online Medieval And Classical Library (OMACL) aims to “provide a free and easy way … to access some of the most important literary works of Classical and Medieval civilization.” It is maintained by Douglas B. Killings (CU). The archive includes works of Chaucer, Norse sagas in English, and medieval legal texts. OMACL now has a Web site. URL: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/. Most of OMACL’s shorter e-texts are available through this site. Texts can be downloaded from the following site: ftp://ukanaix.cc.ukans/edu Anonymous login, then set for directory: pub/history/Europe/Medieval/translations All these e-texts are in the public domain in the United States, and are released in straight ASCII format. Compression is done using PKZIP v. 2.04g.
The editors of Traditio, a scholarly journal dedicated to the history, thought, and culture of antiquity and the Middle Ages, have announced the availability of an author index and a subject index to the fifty volumes published through 1995. (Though the indexes are not searchable, they include about 800 articles). Also at the WWW site is the foreword to the forthcoming fiftieth anniversary volume, outlining the history of the journal from its founding as an outlet for European emigre scholars in America to its present eminence. URL: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/traditio/traditio.html
Access to European Library Catalogs
Among the links to European library catalogs in WESSWeb is one to Gabriel, Gateway to Europe’s National Libraries. URL for WESSWeb: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/wess. URL for Gabriel: http://portico.bl.uk/gabriel/en/opacs.html. A number of the catalogs listed can be searched directly from the World Wide Web.
There are now a number of regional catalogs in Germany, according to Jim Campbell (ViU). The listing of OPACs from Hannover (URL: (http://www.laum.uni-hannover.de/iln/bibliotheken/sonderkataloge. html) shows the following, with login instructions: Berlin-Brandenburg
- Nordrhein-Westfalen
- Sachsen-Anhalt
- the Verbundkatalog of the Deutsches Bibliotheksinstitut (VK94) Südwestdeutscher Bibliotheksverbund (comprises Baden-Wurttemberg, Saxony, and southern Rheinland-Pfalz) The NRW and SWB OPACs can be searched directly from the Web.
Checklist of Online Newspapers from Germany
Several more German newspapers have set up web pages. The following list of all the currently available papers might be useful even though it includes some that have been discussed in this column in the past:
- Hamburger Morgenpost (Hamburg)-Hamburger Morgenpost Online
- Selected tidbits from the daily tabloid. URL: http://www.mopo.de
- Rhein-Zeitung (Koblenz)-Rhein-Zeitung Online
- Front page, good photos. Archive available to subscribers; free subscriptions for readers outside Germany. URL: http://primus.cicero.de
- Saarbrucker Zeitung (Saarbrucken)-Saarbrucker Zeitung Newsline
- News from the next day’s issue, politics, economics, sports. URL: http://www.sz-sb.de
- Schweriner Volkszeitung (Schwerin)
- URL: http://www.nordwest.pop.de
- Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich)-SZ on Net
- Selected articles. The archive can be searched only by date and department in the newspaper. URL: http://www-dw.gmd.de/sz/
- Der Tagesspiegel (Berlin)
- Selected articles; local services URL: http://www.tagesspiegel-berlin.de/
- Die Tageszeitung-DigiTAZ All articles from the newspaper
- URL: http://www.taz.de/
- Die Welt-Die Welt Online
- A selection of next day’s virtual paper: Page One, German and world news, culture, editorials, sports. Archive search. URL: http://www.welt.de
- Die Zeit-Die Zeit im Internet
- Selected articles from the weekly newspaper are published electronically on Wednesday evening. Includes the computer section and job ads. URL: http://www.zeit.de
CRL Foreign Newspapers
Kristine Smets (formerly a cataloger at the Center for Research Libaries, now at the Joint Fund/World Bank) has provided information about the center’s Foreign Newspaper Project: The Center for Research Libraries’ Foreign Newspaper Project is a bibliographic access project funded by the U.S. Department of Education Higher Education Act Title II-C through March 1996. In addition to cataloging over 5,800 newspaper titles, the project has established a web page to increase title and geographic access to the Center’s foreign newspaper holdings. URL: http://www.crl.uchicago.edu/~paper/Foreign_newspapers.html
From this homepage, it is possible to access lists of foreign newspapers held by the Center; newspapers currently received; currently filmed; and newspapers held by the five Center-administered area studies microform projects: the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP), the Latin American Microform Project (LAMP), the Middle East Microform Project (MEMP), the South Asia Microform Project (SAMP), and the Southeast Asia Microform Project (SEAM).
Citing Internet Resources
With the amount of information now being found online, it is necessary to know how to cite Internet and World Wide Web sources. The following references on citing these sources were given on Autocat, the discussion group on cataloging and authorities: Citation Style for Internet Sources by Mark Wainwright http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/maw13/citation.html
MLA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources, by Janice R. Walker http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/mla.html
A Brief Citation Guide for Internet Sources in History and the Humanities is: http://www.nmmc.com/libweb/employee/citguide.htm
A print source for similar information is Electronic Style : A Guide to Citing Electronic Information by Xia Li and Nancy B. Crane, pubished in 1995 by Mecklermedia in Westport, Ct. It has many examples and a relatively complete discussion of citations for FTP, Telnet, discussions groups, interest groups, and bulletin boards.
SASS-Link Address
SASS-Link, the web page for information about Scandinavia, formerly a gopher, has a new address: URL: http://humanities.byu.edu/ScandStudies/sasshome.htm
Electronic Resources by WESS Members
Tom Kilton (IU), past WESS Chair, writes: The recipient of the 1994 Martinus International West European Specialist study grant, James Spohrer, has published his research findings in an article now available on the World Wide Web: URL: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Collections/Germanic/jsart.html. The article is entitled: “Preserving the Written Record: Evaluation of Preservation Programs at Four Major European Libraries.” It is a lively and very informative account of preservation efforts at the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Hague), the Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel, Germany), and the Sächsische Landesbibliothek (Dresden).
Kurt De Belder (NNU) notes: During the ALA midwinter meeting some WESSies expressed interest in the individual author sections of the e-text pages for French, German, and Italian literature on the NYU web. I have given the individual author sections a “virtual” URL so that one can link directly to that section.
French:
http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/resbysub/humanit/subjects/french /fr-e-txt.htm#IND
German:
http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/resbysub/humanit/subjects/german /gr-e-txt.htm#IND
Italian:
http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/resbysub/humanit/subjects/italia n/it-e-txt.htm#IND