Posts

The Brittany Movie Archive | Gwarez Filmoù

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This blog post is based on the information provided by the Brittany Movie Archive , my personal knowledge, and the interview given a few months ago by Marie Carrez to the Cinémathèque du documentaire, on her suggestion. Said interview is available here , in French. I would like to thank Marie Carrez once again for her help and diligence in organising the screening for the conference. Still from “ Purée géante à Brest ” [litt. Giant mashed potatoes in Brest], amateur movie from Daniel Jacolot, 1986 freely available here . Do you recognize Brest’s main square? For those of you who came to our last conference, you may have attended the screening of a documentary titled “ Americans in Brest in 1917 ”. Made by the Brittany Movie Archive, it presents archives shot by the Sammies themselves stationed in Brest during the First World War, sources that were not largely available in France before. While it may seem a bit far from our usual fields of work in Celtic studies, it’s a an important par

Using IIIF on ISOS and other repositories of digitised manuscripts

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This month, I will give you a quick overview of how to view manuscript images online using the (now standard) International Image Interoperability Framework ( IIIF , pronounced ‘triple-i F’). Though the name may sound scary, there is really no reason to be afraid! For the more technologically enclined amongst you, I would recommend checking out the IIIF website to find out more about how it works, as well as any news and events happening. For everyone else, all you need to know is that IIIF enables you to view and interact with images on a web browser in more ways than a browser can allow on its own (e.g. deep zoom, comparison, colour changes etc). And on top of that, more and more universities and libraries now use it to display their digitised objects, so it’s extremely useful to know how to make the most of its functionalities. There are two “technical” elements you should know about when using IIIF: Image viewer : this is the software that allows viewing and manipulation of image

History and Archaeology: why we need an interdisciplinary approach to the past

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Something I’ve noticed in my short academic career is the way that certain fields can become rather insular, and coming from a bit of an interdisciplinary background I’ve seen this as a bit of a problem: back when I was doing my undergrad, I majored in Medieval Studies -- a bit of a catch-all term that included literature, religion, history, and (to a much smaller extent at my university) archaeology.  I see interdisciplinary approaches rather necessary to be able to understand the past. Despite archaeology being the smallest part of Medieval Studies at my university, it is what really spoke to me, because it felt so much more concrete, and when I continued on into my Masters I jumped into the discipline.  To quote the esteemed archaeologist Indiana Jones “archaeology is the search for facts”, and often those facts seemed more real: in a course with a more traditional Celtic Studies focus I might read the Táin Bó Cúailnge (or any other saga) and engage with the papers on papers about

DASG (Dachaigh airson Stòras na Gàidhlig)

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This month, we’re giving you an overview of the largest digital resource for Scottish Gaelic – DASG . We’ll have a look at its components and how both researchers and language learners can use them and benefit from them. So, first things first – what is DASG? DASG stands for Dachaigh airson Stòras na Gàidhlig, or Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic. It is an online repository for digitised texts ( Corpas na Gàidhlig ), lexical resources ( Faclan bhon t-Sluagh ), and audio recordings ( Cluas ri Claisneachd ). In addition to these three main components (which you can find along the top of the website), the website also contains background information on the project, such as “Aims of DASG”, “Publications” (about the project in general and research that used DASG as a resource), “Gairm Online” (a Gaelic periodical that is being digitised and uploaded. This is a work in progress, but you can already flip through copies of the first view issues!), and an introduction to the “DASG Team” and