My basic research tools

I just updated my "Research Tools" page (see tab above). Let me know what you think.

Adventures in Pdf land

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I continue to be astonished by the research that's possible on the Net. I've been reading, on computer, a pdf of a rare book, Racine et Voisin, that I was able to download from the Internet Archive. 

The author quotes an entry in Registre de La Grange. La Grange worked for Molière's troupe, and dutifully recorded daily tallies (and much else). The date given for the entry in Racine et Voisin seemed wrong according to my notes. A short Net search revealed that La Grange's notes were available on Open Library — a searchable version, no less, and I was quickly able to verify my suspicions.  

There is a wealth of information in La Grange's notes. With respect to this particular event, Molière's troupe had invested a considerable amount in producing the young and aspiring playwright Jean Racine's tragedy, Alexander, and were thus — according to La Grange's note — rather surprised to discover that the same play was also being performed by a rival theatrical troupe ... and that this had been Racine's doing.  

Jean Racine (see image above) was a genius, a writer of great power, but he was also, to be blunt, a rat. 

To see Registre de La Grange, go to: http://bit.ly/LaGrangeRegister (You may have to join Open Library, first.)

To see Racine et Voisin by Marc de Monifaud, go to: http://bit.ly/Racine_et_Voisin

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Top ten research sites

I'm pleased to be a guest blogger on Madam Mayo today, listing my five top historical research sites, and why.

Ancient libraries on-line

Renaissance Magazine has an interesting article in the December, 2007 (#58) issue on how ancient books are being digitized for on-line libraries. Normally books are scanned, but the photo-like images take up lots of file space. If converted to text, the files are smaller. An additional advantage, for the researcher, is that they can then be searched.

However, converting old books to text is challenging because of the irregularity of the printing. An interesting solution makes use of the garbled letters test given to an estimated 60 million internet users a day. By incorporating snippets of a scanned book into the tests—and feeding the “translations” back to the digital library—a digital text version of the book is created.