---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gregory, Rabia <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 2011/9/4
Subject: [M-R] FW: [M-R] Revue de l’Ordre de Prémontré on-line?
To: [log in to unmask]medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and cultureI am forwarding a reply from Sue Steuer, who is not subscribed to this list, about a digitization project for "Liturgy" and the possibility of collaborating to digitize other journals. If anyone is interested in collaborating on such a project or has appropriate material feel free to contact her directly
Best,
-Rabia
From: Susan Mb Steuer [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2011 11:11 AM
To: Gregory, Rabia
Subject: Re: [M-R] Revue de l’Ordre de Prémontré on-line?
Hi Rabia,
I am not on this listserv, and thanks. I am very interested in this issue. We have recently digitized "Liturgy" which was a post-Vatican II newsletter/journal published by Gethsemani Abbey, a Cistercian house in Trappist, KY. It is now available at http://www.wmich.edu/library/digi/collections/liturgy/journal/. We had to borrow a few issues from one of the women's houses, but since they were coming to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, they just brought them along and we finished them up before they went back. I don't think even Gethsemani had a full run and only 4 or 5 academic libraries had parts of the run listed on worldcat, though it is possible they are buried in some archival collection rather than being cataloged as a serial.
We would do more of this kind of project, most likely, if we had access to the paper editions, but also if we could find funding (probably a grant) to do them. It certainly fits in with the mission of our Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies. Many universities have the infrastructure to do this stuff (high-end scanners, OCR software, appropriate platforms for display) and often these projects can be sandwiched in among other work efficiently, but the costs include a significant outlay for indexing (metadata which is done by people who know something about the material, not machines) and have an afterlife in expenses in ongoing server space, maintenance and migration to new "standards" every few years -- it's a real commitment which can be hard to sell to administrators. This is the kind of project that would be terrific to do if you could set up all the contacts with a number of religious houses and "subject specialists" to make it a really good usable collection with an intuitive interface, take advantage of economies of scale and market it to the target audience to generate the usage statistics to keep it up and running. And it would be an advantage to have one institution or a group of institutions do as many as possible together so that they would be easier to find, rather than scattered all over the web. It would certainly be more accessible than having some big outfit do it for profit and watch the material get more expensive to access each year.
Thanks for sharing this with me, it's really given me something to think about,
Sue Steuer
Associate Professor and
Head, Special Collections and Rare Book Department
Western Michigan University
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Chandler [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 11:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [M-R] Revue de l’Ordre de Prémontré on-line?
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I've also searched unsuccessfully for Revue de l’Ordre de Prémontré, and I'm fairly sure it's not online (and not in my country).
There are many, often very long-lived and sometimes quite important journals from religious orders of interest to scholars of medieval religion which are held by extremely few libraries. It's often unlikely the orders which published them will have the resources to scan and publish them electronically, as their memberships are declining in Europe and their interests are turning to the global south. If they allow the likes of Elsevier or Wiley to buy out their rights to their back catalogues -- as I sometimes hear spoken of -- they may well be marketed at prices unaffordable to all but the wealthiest and most exclusive institutions and will be little more accessible than now. (A recent interesting rant against "knowledge monopoly racketeers" by George Monbiot is here: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist>
My own order is facing this kind of dilemma about its substantial back catalogue, a 55-year specialised bibliography, and many rare bibliographical items which could be made available in electronic form, but there is no funding and little technical knowledge or commercial savvy. GoogleBooks is likely to be working with only the largest libraries for many years to come; other possibilities often seem exploitative.
Do any med-rellers have insights about practical ways forward to make this kind of literature permanently accessible? -- Paul
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
one of the articles cited by Oliver Guyottjeannin about the miracle at Braine
is:
P. Evermode, “L’abbaye royale de Saint-Yved de Braisne et son miracle
eucharistique,” Revue de l’Ordre de Prémontré et de sa mission, 1912
a somewhat obscure periodical ( WorldCat lists its presence only at Harvard),
and i have not been able to find this anywhere on-line.
does anyone know of a site which might have it?
c
--
Paul Chandler, O.Carm.
Holy Spirit Seminary | PO Box 18 (487 Earnshaw Road) | Banyo Qld 4014 | Australia
office: (07) 3246 9888 | home: (07) 3246 9894
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