I have to confess publicly, at the risk of being thought rude, that I was dumbfounded to read Polly Low's comment this morning:

The absence of the latest newsletter from the BES website is deliberate — only [listserv] subscribers get the cutting-edge news!

Why on earth would a professional academic organization with a web presence and a mission statement thereon that contains the following words limit themselves in this way?:

to promote the study of inscriptions, texts and historical documents ... disseminating news of the latest developments in epigraphic studies, in Britain and around the world

Or is the real issue that "subscribers" = "members" and timely access to the newsletter is seen by the Society as an exclusive benefit of membership?

Over at the UVA Library's Scholar's Lab Blog, Jean Bauer has a useful post ("Normality: For or Against") in which she considers the process of database normalization, its value in the context of particular historical research tasks, and the interesting problems that arise when you consider publishing such a database -- designed originally to support a particular line of inquiry -- for the use of other scholars.

Blake Mathis just sent an email to the Moontown Airport announcements list (where I as a non-piloting neighbor lurk; kml):

Annual Fly-In Reminder, This Saturday & Sunday, tell your friends!

All, this is a friendly reminder of the BIG, FANTASTIC and FUN, Annual Moontown Fly-In, THIS Saturday and Sunday, September 20-21. There is will lots of planes, lots of people, food and lots of fun. Plan to bring your family out to an Old Fashion Grass Field fly-In, the way it used to be. Bi-wings, homebuilt, Cubs, Champs and many more. No admission charged for the fly-in.

Tickets are still on sale for the Saturday night dinner banquet at George’s hangar. This annual event has featured speakers from Astronauts to Authors. This year, the planning committee asked me to MC the evening and present to you some of our own local legends from around our community. Come enjoy a special evenings with friends as we look to the past and learn what it was like to serve in the military during World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Whether it was storming the beaches at Normandy or flying bombers round the clock to intimidate Russia, the brave service of these people helped make America what it is today. They will share a few details of their service. Hear serious stories of survival; as well as some humor that sometime kept them going. Who knows, we might even talk George into dancing for us!

Visit the website for details on the entire weekend event and call the lounge to get your tickets for the dinner banquet, Before They Are Gone! 852-9781. Be sure to forward this to your friends. See you there!

I recently blogged the announcement of the CHS-sponsored First Thousand Years of Greek project. It looks as if Neel is beginning to roll out related code, documentation and information on the CHS Digital Incunabula site.

Help support the lecture series of the North Alabama Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.

On Saturday, November 15th, 7:00-9:00 PM, NASAIA will host a wine tasting at the Lowe House (210 Williams Street) the elegant, historic home of UAHuntsville President Dave Williams. Sommelier Tami Herrington of Pinnacle Imports will guide guests through the wines of South America. As you sample these fine wines you can bid on the treasures available in a silent auction. As a special event, renowned NASA archaeologist Dr. Tom Sever will give a brief talk on his most recent research on the Maya.

Tickets available for $25/glass, $40/couple, and $15/seniors. Please Contact Lillian Joyce for tickets: JoyceL@uah.edu.

The North Alabama Society of the Archaeological Institute of America is hosting Dr. Sarah Parcak for two talks next Wednesday:

• Women and Power in Antiquity: A New Kingdom Case Study from Deir el-Medina, Thebes, 2:20 p.m. in Roberts 419 on the UAH campus
• Making the Mummies Dance from Space: Using Satellite Imagery to Find Ancient Egypt, 7:30 p.m. in the Chan Auditorium (first floor Business Administration Building) on the UAH campus

You can read more about Dr. Parcak's work, and much else, on the NASAIA blog, Excavate!

The above quote is attributed to Gwendolyn Bradley, of the American Association of University Professors, in this morning's issue of Inside Higher Education where Scott Jaschik writes about a "New Form of Adjunct Abuse":

At San Antonio College ... adjuncts are being encouraged to take on extra courses, ... [but] the college is asking some part timers ... to agree in writing to pretend that they aren’t teaching 12 credits. ...

Gerald J. Davey, an adjunct at San Antonio College who has served as the adjunct representative on the Faculty Council there, did not sign a waiver, but he has spoken with those who have and is angry about the system being used. Davey said that, in years past, once an adjunct has had a contract for 12 credits, benefits and higher pay scales have kicked in — and that the waivers are an attempt to limit what adjuncts receive from the college.

Aside:

I can't help but draw attention to this most unfortunate of "context-sensitive" advertisements that appeared alongside Jaschik's story:

Post by Arietta Papaconstantinou noted just now on the papy list (closed archive, sorry, so no link to original message):

Pinakes: Greek texts and manuscripts

http://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr

The Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (CNRS, Paris) is happy to announce that the Pinakes database (formerly Greek Index Project) is now available for consultation in a free web version.

The database lists the manuscripts of Greek works written prior to A.D. 1600, for the most part recorded in printed catalogues of manuscripts.

The current version of Pinakes includes 200,000 entries. It provides manuscript listings for 13,000 works, which represent almost 40,000 manuscripts from 1,300 libraries worldwide. The records are intentionally brief and concise. The focus is on the content of each manuscript (authors and works). Dates are given according to catalogues. Basic codicological and paleographical information is provided only insofar as it is related to the texts.

Kevin Smith's "Copyright use case on a Grecian urn," Scholarly Communications @ Duke (6 September 2008) is worth a read. One highlight:

owning an object in the public domain, like a classical vase, does not create any intellectual property rights. Simply by owning and displaying the vase the museum does not gain a copyright interest where there was no such interest before

Just one highlight in a BMCR Review well worth reading:

Specialists in a range of sub-fields will be consulting this volume for years to come, and the indices facilitate this. As Linderski observes, "without detailed indices all texts but particularly inscriptions are half mute" (412), but as he also points out, one now wants more: electronic editions fully machine-searchable. Academic publishers need to keep up with technology at the rate scholars do or they risk obsolescence.