medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: "Millett E.N." <[log in to unmask]>
> But virtual folders are a great deal less trouble to organize than real
ones; and if you lose track of anything, Google Desktop will search your
entire computer (text, not just filenames) for it, something that can't
be done with a filing cabinet . . .
> Bella
quite right --the advantages of having things in a fully digitized (i.e.,
OCRed) form are many and profound.
though not entirely SeniorMomentProof (what is?), compared to using some sort
of search program (even the hopelessly Lame one available in I.E.), locating
the precise reference to that obscure article buried in some other article
(which one??) by riffling through scores of folders containing hundreds of
hard copies of articles is simply not an Efficient use of the Time remaining
to those whose Golden Years are fast becomming Leaden.
in the Ideal World *every*thing would be in a searchable format --and the
newest version of Acrobat has apparently arrived at reliable searchability
(which is, alas, No Help for all the old files on Gallica/GoogleBooks, etc.,
which obviously will not be rescanned, since they are already available in a
digital format, albeit only _en principe_).
there is still the problem of storing those damned obese .pdfs, but that
decreases as storage gets cheaper --though wearing a necklace of USB drives
seems a bit of an Extreme Sacrifice to Digitalization.
anyway, a good friend of mine has had the slogan "You can never have Too Much
Storage" pasted on his frig for decades.
an example of what the newest (far as i am aware) technology looks like can be
seen on (of all places) the site of the Archives départementales of the
Eure-et-Loir (Chartres),
http://www.archives28.fr/ec/index2.php
where one can download most all the volumes (still lacking the Archives
hospitalières outside Chartres) of the essential Inventaires sommaires in
*searchable* .pdf format.
most of the surviving records of the Cathedral of Chartres and the dozens of
other ecclesiastical institutions of the diocese/departement/region, in a 90+%
searchable --also mark-n-pastable into Word-- format.
these guys are legitimately rare books, folks, found only in the best research
libraries and, now, through the Miracle of The Innernets, on three CDs in a
little country house in the hills of Southern Indianer.
ahellofa resource.
> -----Original Message-----
>On Behalf Of Cormack, Margaret Jean
> Dear Christopher,
> But then you have to organize your CDs and/or hard drive, which is just as
bad as when the stuff is on paper!
au contraire, ma frere.
true, you can't just put stuff on CDs --or in DOS dirctories, for that
matter-- Higgly Piggly; any more than you can just randomly stuff filing
cabinets full of xeroxes.
but, all the tomes of the Recueil des Historiens de la France fit on two or
three CDs, as do all available (on Gallica) runs of the Bibl. de la Ecole de
Chartes, the Bulletin Monumental, Congres Archeologique, various local French
archeological societies, whatever.
pulling articles off of JSTOR and just pasting them into WORD works pretty
well (mostly requiring only cleaning up of the formating); and pasting huge
sections of the PL or the AASS from the digitized edition is flawless.
in short, a huge bookcase of stuff boiled down to a shoebox full of CDs (the
cost of each of the CDs being about a thin U.S. dime).
not a bad tradeoff, considering the (impossible) alternative.
c
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