If a single book were your most precious object, how would you keep it safe? BASIRA (Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art): https://basiraproject.org/ #medievalsky
Dot Porter
@leoba.bsky.social
Medievalist, digital humanist, and wannabe booklicker. I'm here to post memes and yell about manuscripts. See also @sims-mss.bsky.social I speak for myself and not for my employer
This Friday, join Tim Stinson in his SIMS Online Lecture on continuing work to sample and analyze DNA in parchment, "The Skin Keeps the Score: DNA Analysis of Medieval Manor Court Rolls" - 12pm Noon EST, on Zoom! Register now: https://bit.ly/4zqEpop #medievalsky
The Skin Keeps the Score: DNA Analysis of Medieval Manor Court Rolls
Timothy Stinson (North Carolina State University) reports on the development and validation of a new non-destructive sampling technique that employs cytology brushes to collect samples from parchment ...
bit.ly
Say hello to BASIRA (Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art): https://basiraproject.org/ #medievalsky --------------- Video by Emily Brooks Music by J.D. Porter Narration by Iris Péron-Ames
Canine conversations in a Ferial psalter (Ms. Codex 1057, fol. 16r) #medievalsky 🔗: https://bit.ly/4yp8hl7
For #CoffeeWithACodex (12pm ET, on Zoom) on October 15, Louis Meiselman will show us an early manuscript of Aṿat nefesh, a supercommentary to Abraham ibn Ezra's commentary on the Pentateuch #medievalsky Register here: https://bit.ly/4yp3LTB
Coffee with a Codex: Commentary on a Commentary
An informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each week we'll feature a different...
bit.ly
Excited to report on some work I did with @sims-mss.bsky.social & some tough-to-read but very rewarding historical sources. Come hear me talk about transcription tools now at our disposal, & what is required to use them (hint: it's not computer fairy dust...) www.library.upenn.edu/events/schoe...
Using Handwritten Text Recognition for Rich and Abundant Historical Source Collections: The Case of Medieval Italian Financial Records
Laural Morreale (Independent Scholar) will describe how to train Handwritten Text Recognition models to read difficult sources like the Italian financial records and will outline the costs, potential ...
library.upenn.edu
a cool thing about being wrong and changing your mind is, once you do it you’re not wrong anymore
That time someone dumped a toy house on the cemetery wall and, when I crouched a bit, some ✨ Hollywood Magic ✨ occurred.
"Whereas the AI users got answers wrong or gave up entirely when the AI assistance was withdrawn, the group without AI stuck with the task and were more successful at the end."
Shannon Vallor@shannonvallor.bsky.social · 5d agoWe are soon going to have to come to grips with the fact that this shit is asbestos for the mind
by all means, AI evangelists: leave me behind, off with you, godspeed, don’t let the door hit you news.berkeley.edu/2026/10/09/u...
Using AI for just 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things - Berkeley News
A UC Berkeley researcher co-authored a study that raises profound questions about how we interact with artificial intelligence in education — and daily life.
news.berkeley.edu
AI doesn't "bring the archive to life" or to even "show what this looked like in color." The medium is the message, in the sense that there is never life in a photo, there is a material object with artifacts that memorialized technology as much as any moment. It's all more imagination avoidance
Natural history museums are at an inflection point that started with the auctioning of dinosaurs. If Fort Hays State (Sternberg) or Drexel (Acad.Nat.Sci.) think they can monetize collections (i.e., sell natural history specimens); museums become safety deposit boxes instead of research institutes.
Our NEH grant to continue development of VCeditor, which had been rescinded by DOGE, has been reinstated! So that's good. More information about that coming soon...
Tomorrow at Noon EST, in her talk in the series From the Kislak Stacks curator @leoba.bsky.social will use two recent acquisitions to discuss critical making and how Kislak collections can inspire creativity. Register here: https://bit.ly/4yI5aVA #medievalsky #DHMakes
#MedievalSky This from the New York Times, minutes ago: "Has plague ever been used as a bioweapon? Maybe — but it’s been a while. In the 14th century, according to one account, a Mongol army catapulted plague-infested bodies into the Crimean city of Caffa." Please don't let this nonsense persist!
Exactly this. And in fact, many models *have* been created this way, and decades of prior machine learning systems *were* created this way, consensually. These things are choices! People are STILL working this way! It’s not just that a better world is possible — it already EXISTS. We can nurture it.
John Scalzi@scalzi.com · last wk.This is your occasional reminder that generative "AI" in particular could have been developed on public domain materials and/or licensed and compensated works but the major players intentionally, methodically and systemically chose to steal labor from working creative folks instead
Some marginalia from my full reading of the Pope's Encyclical on AI this morning: - AI does not love - AI does not intrinsically value truth or justice - AI does not experience hunger - AI does not experience communion with the natural world or any sort of higher power
For #CoffeeWithACodex (12pm ET, on Zoom) on October 8, @leoba.bsky.social will show us our 15th century copy of a work, in Greek, on plants and their medicinal properties #medievalsky Register here: https://bit.ly/4y2tW1s
Coffee with a Codex: Greek Herbal
An informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each week we'll feature a different...
bit.ly
Job: Associate Professor of Art and Architecture of the Medieval World at Johns Hopkins University #medievalsky
Associate Professor of Art and Architecture of the Medieval World, Baltimore
Lauren Crabtree. Department of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 01.07.2027, Bewerbungsschluss: 30.10.2026
arthist.net
Coming soon to @britishlibrary.bsky.social - Conquest: The Making of Norman England 1 Oct 2027 - 27 Feb 2028 events.bl.uk/exhibitions/...
Conquest: The Making of Norman England | British Library
Beyond the battlefield lies a story of ambition, upheaval and reinvention. Spanning the generations before and after 1066, this exhibition traces the impac
events.bl.uk
I'd just yell at them about medieval manuscripts and how amazing they are
I'll never understand how "a lot of mostly/potentially/probably incorrect metadata is better for digital discovery than accurate but sparse metadata" became a popular idea than "we will put things online more slowly, but we will do it with accuracy"
Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 2w agoAn interesting report of a project at the Hertziana includes this note. I would argue that access to historical archives is actually hindered when you throw chat at something to transcribe handwritten metadata, which produces errors. But let's say you're willing to make this compromise. +
An interesting report of a project at the Hertziana includes this note. I would argue that access to historical archives is actually hindered when you throw chat at something to transcribe handwritten metadata, which produces errors. But let's say you're willing to make this compromise. +
You might have heard me mention that 2027 is the European year of the Normans and @britishlibrary.bsky.social is now advertising its major exhibition for that. Think of it as the sequel to the excellent Anglo-Saxon ehibition several years ago. events.bl.uk/exhibitions/... #medievalsky 1/
Conquest: The Making of Norman England | British Library
Beyond the battlefield lies a story of ambition, upheaval and reinvention. Spanning the generations before and after 1066, this exhibition traces the impac
events.bl.uk
I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:
“Human beings are called to be co-workers in the work of creation, not merely passive consumers of content generated by artificial technology.” — Pope Leo XIV
Hope your day was better than Darwin’s, on this day 165 years ago
