"king of the Franks" Among the wurst puns I've seen

This was such a wonderful exercise and a great class!

Lisa Fagin Davis@lisafdavis.bsky.social · 2mo ago

If it's Wednesday @rarebookschool.bsky.social Latin Paleography, that means we've made it all the way to the year 1200, which means it's time for SPEED-DATING! Six minutes per leaf to classify the hand and give it a date (pre-1200). Ready, set, GO!

Oh look how she has changed! The latin alphabet from circa 600-1200 C.E. I am at @rarebookschool.bsky.social this week for a paleography course led by @lisafdavis.bsky.social

Day 2 of Dream Lab @pricelab.bsky.social complete! Today, we covered OCR and HTR and how to process unstructured data (texts) into structured data through Tf-Idf. After that, we learned 3 methods to understand similarities between texts using Tf-Idf, LDA (topic modeling), and XML tagging!

First day at @pricelab.bsky.social Dream Lab done! For my course on Digital Methods for Early Modern Books, I got to see some beautiful early modern books, including this New Kreüterbůch full of herbal/medicinal plants! Pictured are various squashes and mouse-ear hawkweed. QK41 .F815 1543

Several of the students in the class I am TAing this semester are also in a course on Beowulf with @phil-lol-ogist.bsky.social One used their own translations of Beowulf throughout their essay on queenship in Beowulf for my class - inter-departmental crossover is the best!

Hard to believe it is just over a week until @kzooicms.bsky.social ! I will be presenting, presiding, and performing this K'zoo! I will present a facet of my research on the Strasbourg 1518 St. Vitus dance, focusing on the devotional aspect of treating the dancers through pilgrimage. (More below)

Me at the beginning of the semester versus the end: (BSB 4 P.o.germ.111 d)

Teaching Old English elegies to my students today - thinking back on almost exactly four years ago when I took medieval lit and learned about these poems for the first time from @jenlorden.bsky.social !

A Viking-Age Valentine’s Day Card: A Medieval Runic Love Message from Sweden www.medievalists.net/2026/02/a-vi... #HappyValentinesDay #medieval #Norse #Love

A Viking-Age Valentine’s Day Card: A Medieval Runic Love Message from Sweden - Medievalists.net

How do you tell someone you love them in Viking-Age Sweden? You carve a message in runes on a knife: “Think of me, and I’ll think of you.”

medievalists.net

Games I didn't know needed to exist: Birds, the game, and Gavitt's Stock Exchange, the game, and slightly creepy outfit making games....(I think she's watching me) Both are located at Rare Book School @rarebookschool.bsky.social

Interesting religious leaflets slipped inside a card game box (~ 1889) @rarebookschool.bsky.social Very anti-alcoholic messaging, maybe Protestant/prohibition era? On the back is a story and reading comprehension questions. Unclear if they are from before/after the time of purchase. Probably after?

What you got there Shakespeare? 🤨 Authors cards @rarebookschool.bsky.social

Re-reading Stripping of the Altars and thinking a lot about community, exclusion, and illness. "Exlcusion from the cult of the saint could be experienced as exclusion from community" "The healing mediated by the saint restored more than health to the sick" Healing meant restoring to community

MA thesis defended! A few very minor revisions to make, then it will be submitted! One step closer to the sweet, sweet gender neutral honorific. Looking forward to writing more about the weird and wacky ways medieval people cared for each other.

Very early 18th century weaving patterns @folger.edu (V.a.540)!!! A couple of these look like twills and most are diamonds - several patterns in the book required up to 16 harnesses! The book is little - about 4.5" by 2.5" and also features recipes for bovine and human child cures.

Had an absolutely glorious time today looking at medieval books of hours and breviaries at Albert and Shirley Small special collections! @rareuva.bsky.social I always am fascinated by looking at signs of use - seeing how worn some pages were and where other codices fell open to was amazing!

What platforms are folks using for DH projects which are object-focused? I'm familiar with StoryMaps, what else is out there for online presentations of objects along with descriptive and brief analysis? Thanks in advance!

I attended a lovely talk by @sophiewhittle.bsky.social on the role of LLMs and generative AI in Digital Scholarly Editing! I'm excited to see discussions about how AI comes to bear on early period work. I'm left reflecting on the utility of AI and the (modern) biases that it may introduce to texts.