HOME | LAST 100 POSTS | CONTACT ME

Author: admin

  • Internet Archive and Legal Action

    Internet Archive and Legal Action

    There is a very useful resource of books and publications at the Internet Archive that offers the text of hundreds of thousands of books. They’re in the challenging situation now of finding themselves being sued by four publishers, the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House. The aim of the Internet Archive is to make older books available on-line, and for those books still in copyright, they restrict the number of copies that can be lent out in a similar set-up to traditional libraries.

    It would perhaps be a great shame if the publishers are able to bring down this project at the Internet Archive, but a real problem remains that libraries are failing to service the need of many readers. The stock of titles on the shelves of Norfolk libraries is, to be honest, erratic and users have to pay per book to access the vast majority of useful stock which is at the “County Reserve Store”. The library service does an excellent job of supplying modern fiction titles, but their selection of non-fiction misses out some key texts that I’m not sure any library should be without, not helped by the problem mentioned to me by the library staff member at Dereham that they lost many books to thieves.

    Many of the books at the Internet Archive are out of print, so can only be obtained at some cost from second-hand book dealers. The publishers will probably win their campaign against the Internet Archive, but I’m hoping there is some compromise available. Anyway, the text of their case (in .PDF) is here.

  • Florence – Museo degli Innocenti (St. Mary Magdalen by Agnolo di Polo)

    Florence – Museo degli Innocenti (St. Mary Magdalen by Agnolo di Polo)

    This terracotta figure dates from the first part of the sixteenth century and was inspired by a wooden statue produced by Donatello. It was created and painted by Agnolo di Polo, a local artist who was born in Florence in 1470 and died in 1528. Due to old damage, the hands of the figure are modern and were added in 2015, but are connected with magnets and can be easily removed if required.

    This is the wooden statue, now in the Cathedral’s museum, produced by Donatello.

  • Florence – Florence Cathedral Museum (1523 Choirbook)

    Florence – Florence Cathedral Museum (1523 Choirbook)

    Always lovely to see an old book on display, this one in the Cathedral’s museum dates to 1523 and is known as an antiphonary, or a religious book which was used by the choir. The imagery, beautifully created, depicts Moses showing the Tablets of the Law.

  • Florence – Florence Cathedral Museum (King David by Andrea Pisano)

    Florence – Florence Cathedral Museum (King David by Andrea Pisano)

    This statue was once located on the north side of Florence Cathedral and depicts King David. It was sculpted by Andrea Pisano (1290-1348), who became the Master of Works at the Cathedral in 1340, between 1337 and 1341. This sculpture was part of a set of depictions that were designed to show those prophesied the coming of Jesus.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Eighty-Seven

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Eighty-Seven

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

    Conger

    This is defined as “to conger; the agreement of a set or knot of booksellers of London, that whosoever of them shall buy a good copy, the rest shall take off such a particular number, in quires, at a stated price; also booksellers joining to buy either a considerable or dangerous copy”.

    This was an arrangement amongst booksellers, which were nearly all in London, to jointly finance the production of a book and they purchased shares to that effect and also agreed to purchase a certain number of copies for their shops. This agreement took hold in the early eighteenth century and lasted until around the middle of the nineteenth century. The subscription model was the other way of funding expensive books, such as encyclopaedias, where purchasers would subscribe in advance to help fund the cost of production and printing.

    The conger agreement was financially very useful to the booksellers and they fought to retain permanent copyright for everything that was produced. Eventually, the courts started to decide that this made books more expensive for the general public and that excessive power was being retained with the sellers. The principle of copyright was extended and the conger model started to face away as competition increased.

  • British Airways – New Club Europe Catering

    British Airways – New Club Europe Catering

    This is the new Club Europe catering that will be used by British Airways over the next three months or so, something of a change from the more substantial and usually cooked offering that was previously provided. Clearly not quite as exciting, but needs must given the current situation. Those passengers in Euro Traveller, who were previously given nothing as it was buy on board, do now get basic soft drinks free of charge.

  • $20,000 to Walk the Appalachian Trail and Drink Beer

    $20,000 to Walk the Appalachian Trail and Drink Beer

    The chance to walk a long-distance trail in the United States and drink beer, but only US citizens can apply. I’ve heard of worse ideas…..

    https://www.dbbrewingcompany.com/cho/rules/

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Eighty-Six

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Eighty-Six

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

    Comus’s Court

    A little bit niche perhaps, the dictionary defines this as “a social meeting formerly held at the Half Moon tavern in Cheapside”. This London pub operated from at least the mid-seventeenth century until 1817, by which time it had become known as the New London Tavern. It’s so niche as to not really be relevant to most of its readers even at the time, but it does paint a picture of what London was like at the end of the eighteenth century.

  • Great Yarmouth – Name Origin

    Great Yarmouth – Name Origin

    Since I’m on a roll with these name origins, and I want a relatively complete list for Norfolk, back to The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Placenames.

    Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Gernemwa in Domesday Book, Gernemuta Magna in 1254. The mouth of the River Yare.

    The Magna means great, which is solely to avoid confusion with Southtown on the southern side of the river, formerly known as Little Yarmouth. The word origin is different from Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, but the word Great has probably persisted to differentiate those two towns. ‘Garienis’ is the Saxon word for the River Yare, so it started with something like ‘Garmud’ and that ‘d’ at the end was pronounced as ‘th’.

  • Brundall – Name Origin

    Brundall – Name Origin

    Brundall was on our third training walk for the LDWA 100, so here’s a quite meander over to The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Placenames.

    Brundall, Norfolk. Brundala in Domesday Book, Brundale in 1180 and Brundhal in 1257. Perhaps a compound of Old English bromede, or broomy, and Halh.

    The ‘halh’ bit is usually a secret place, a tucked away area or some land which is separate from its administrative area. The word ‘broom’ is an old English word for a bramble and by coincide (I assume) there’s also a boat company called Brooms of Brundall. All sounds a bit convoluted and unlikely to me, but I like the idea of Brundall meaning ‘the secret brambled area’.