The Medieval Geek’s Guide

Well, maybe not his favorite, but according to this article, a 15th century edition of a cookbook composed by Richard II’s cooks has been digitized.  That said, I can’t seem to find it on the University of Manchester library site.  I’ll have to look around a bit more — it might come in handy should the medieval-themed wedding someday plan crystalize more.

So here is a rough sketch of what I’m thinking of as far as the book press goes:

Does this make sense? I’m not all that worried about the acme screw — even at a 3/4″ diameter the column won’t fail, but I don’t know if the rods will hold for sure or not. I want 2″ round stock, threaded, for those.

My Dad brought up the point tha I need to be worried about the top popping off due to the pressure from the screw, but I’m thinking reinforcement along one of the x/y axis will help with that. I’m not sure how to do both x and y with my pretty novice level of skill.

The other concern is flatness of the bottom and the pressing board (as well as any nipping boards that would go between), so that the book would remain flat. I’m not sure how to ensure that.

I have been thinking a lot lately about archival stuff, partially because this Spenser project has me thinking about special collections quite a bit and partially because I’ve been gifted some old mass market paperback sci-fi books. Something I’d like to do, provided I can get the time (the money is an issue too but this isn’t a project that has to be done in one fell swoop), is to put all of my books in Solander boxes. Depending on how I did it, this could provide uniformity of size, possibly free up space (although that is unlikely) and definitely provide uniformity of appearance on the bookshelf. It would also give me a way to attach bookplates without doing it to the book itself. This is attractive to me. Uniformity and the bookplate thing aren’t the be-all end-all or anything, but it would be nice. More importantly, I have a few books that need this sort of protection eventually and knowing how to do it myself is more desirable in my eyes than paying someone for the box.

To do this, I figure I’ll need three things: knowledge, supplies, and equipment. Time, too, but that’s not something that I can do anything about and to be honest I suspect I’ll have more time now than I will after I graduate and get a job someplace. As far as knowledge goes, I’ve already picked up a couple of books on the subject. I’ve sent for sampler packs from suppliers to get an idea of what sort of supplies would work best. That leaves equipment.

I need, at minimum, a book press and board shears. Board shears aren’t happening but I can probably use a mat cutter for the same purpose. The book press, on the other hand, could happen but I haven’t seen any that are large enough for what I have in mind. I want to be able to press a coffee-table sized book, if needs be, and the largest I’ve seen and could afford would do a 12″ book.At heart, it seems like a relatively simple mechanism, so I’m thinking even I could build one, provided I had access to the tools and could find an acme threaded rod, a handle, and some very dense wood. That might be something to explore when I’m back in California in May, where I would have access to my father’s much more extensive collection of tools (and not incidentally, his much more mechanically-inclined self). I’ll need something to do while everyone is working during the week, after all, and if I can get his help on the weekend I can do the prepwork/construction at other times. It’ll also help me to narrow down what power tools I need to buy to be able to do something similar out here.

I’ve also been working on a base for the card press. I’ll put pictures up when it’s done, but the construction process isn’t really that exciting. That’s something else I should look into when I’m out there — I’m going to need bolts and nuts to attach the press to the base and I want to go with brass, which I can’t find at the big box home improvement stores.

So as a class project I’m working on a collation of one of my books, and as part of it I’m sending out requests for the collation and pagination formulae of their copies to various libraries and collections around the world. Something I’ve been struck by in doing this is how many libraries seem to take their detailed infromation on the text from the MARC record, or from the Early English Texts edition, without doing a collation of their own copy. I don’t know for a fact that they’re doing so, of course — I haven’t gotten any responses yet — but if my time in the class has taught me anything it’s that printers wouldn’t go through a whole print run and not catch the kind of pagination errors we’re seeing in my copy. Sooner or later they’d catch it on the fly, as it were, and correct it. Which suggests to me that there should be a slew of different pagination errors, and maybe a couple of points where the collation error we noted gets fixed.

To some extent, I suppose this is because this sort of library work isn’t seen as directly benefitting the customers, so gets shoved aside, but it still bothers me in the same way that a lot of our values as a society (money over knowledge, privileging of science over the humanities as being ‘practical’ when the science in question is anything but, education being only worthwhile in the service of a readily identifiable job) bothers me.

In other news, I’m going to see if I can get the department to pay for me to attend the week long book workshop here in May, and if it can be taken for credit. if I did that, and took another four class semester in the Fall, I’d be done with coursework insofar as the unit requirements go. I can also take the opportunity to find out about taking courses, say at Virginia’s Rare Books School or the Paleography course at New Mexico, outside of the department and getting them paid for.

As part of the final two weeks of my first-year seminar course, we’ve been given the opportunity to do a grant proposal as an extra credit assignment.  The idea behind this is to show us what we need to do to win grants, but I’m running into a bit of a problem finding something that would fit my interests (which I still think are a bit all over the place) and which I could apply for this year.

 Most grants fall into two categories–the grant that is intended to make the undergrad want to go to grad school (I’ve already applied for one of these, the Javits Fellowship), and the grant intended to help with dissertation projects, travel to archives, and the like.  Most of the first category are to be applied for during the first year or before entering, and most of the second are to be applied for once you have a dissertation proposal you’re working on.  

What I’d like to find is something that will help with the development of the dissertation proposal, but nothing seems to work quite yet.  The IHR Mellon Fellowship seems like the best bet, but I wouldn’t be able to apply for it until this time next year, since I’ll still have three semesters of coursework after this one. 

And, of course, all of thse are very unlikely to be awarded to me, I think, but I’d kick myself if I didn’t try. 

If one of the indications of power in the play is the limitation to a single area of the play space, the Infernal Trinity is problematic because there is movement between the three.  Either the three members of the Infernal Trinity aren’t co-equal, which would make the Devil the Infernal equivalent of Jesus, or the three are on a single complex wherein they can move around.

Make sure to do the work on Mary and Martha and research the Infernal Trinity as a concept–depictions and the like.

So what do you think the viking dog would be like? Fierce? Bloodthirsty? Ready to tear the throat out of some Anglo-Saxon peasant?

Not exactly.

Let me introduce you to the Swedish Vallhund, or Västgötaspets:

It is like a bite-size wolf. Or a wolf-corgi (they’re actually one of the ancestors of the Pembroke Corgi). They were originally bred for cattle herding, and are about a thousand years old or so as a breed. I suppose technically, being Swedish, it should be slavic throats from the Rus, but they’d have to reach them.

If you care at all about the humanities or philological scholarship, please consider signing this.

Today’s Dinosaur Comics explains why I firmly believe that English makes perfect sense as a language, provided you know a bit of history: