I didn’t go to any of them, but I checked in on my Twitter feed periodically, and was struck by the differences in the conversations that went on around each of these three meetings.  Tweets from #aiaapa actually appeared this year – a stunning difference from the 2011 meetings in San Antonio.  (I looked for twitter messages about AIA/APA in January 2011, and there were literally fewer than 5).  This year, several doughty reporters tweeted the conference panels they attended, including Francesca Tronchin (@tronchin), Tom Elliot (@paregorios), and Kristina Killigrove (@BoneGirlPhD, who made a nice summary of her Twitter work at her blog, Powered By Osteons, and also wrote a valuable post about the Lessons from Live-Tweeting), and others I probably missed.  Many thanks to them – it’s fun and enlightening to be able to drop in on a conference remotely.

In contrast, twitter took over MLA in December 2009, and the #mla2012 and #aha2012 hashtags both ticked forward so fast one could barely follow them this weekend.  At MLA, tweeters started adding second hashtags for the session numbers, so those following along could separate the streams coming from each room and topic.  Some of the difference in volume between these three conferences can be attributed to size – AIA/APA had about 3000 registrants, while AHA had about 3700, and MLA twice that (no 2012 numbers yet, but 2011 in L.A. attracted 7745).  But much more of the difference has to do with disciplinary cultures.  (And it’s not age of the practitioners – I’m 39, the average age of a Twitter user, and Twitter is actually most popular among the 26-44 demographic, not among undergrads or early grad students.)

There weren’t just differences between AIA/APA and its sibling conferences in their use of technology for conference conversation.  There were differences in what the conversations were about, as well.  Blogs at the Chronicle of Higher Ed and Inside Higher Ed reporting on AHA and MLA tell the story that was unfolding on my twitter feed – most of the “news” was about the future of higher education, the job market for PhDs and what a dissertation should even look like, and whether or not digital humanities and/or public history will save us all.  The titles tell the story:

• Historians Reflect on Forces Reshaping Their Profession
• A Tough Sell
• Dissing the Dissertation
• New Era for PhD Education
• Anguish Trumps Activism at MLA

In contrast, I could find no reports at Inside Higher Ed or The Chronicle about what was discussed at AIA/APA, and the tweets from those on the ground were about actual archaeological, historical, or philological (I suppose, though I don’t think I saw any) content.

Does this mean AIA/APA – and by association classicists and archaeologists – are better or worse off than historians and modern language scholars?  There’s an argument that all the tweeting and blogging and navel-gazing and raging about the future of the humanities in the press are just a distraction from the actual purpose of a scholarly meeting – the dissemination of scholarship.  On the other hand, some self-reflection on the part of disciplines is healthy, no?  Especially in light of political and economic trends that threaten the values of academia generally, and the humanities in particular?  I don’t think public history or digital humanities will save us all, but I do think they are ways to engage the public – the college-attending, state-legislature-lobbying public – in the scholarly topics that matter to us all.  Is there a way to achieve the reflectivity and growth without the “anguish”?

I should note there were certainly potentially self-reflective sessions on the AIA/APA program: “Cultural Heritage Preservation in a Dangerous World,” “Presenting the Past,” “Discussions and Strategies Regarding Applying for Grants, Fellowships & Post-Docs,” “The Politics of Archaeology,” “Beyond Multiculturalism: Classica Africana…,” “Authors Meet Critics: Race and Reception,” “Intertextuality and its Discontents,” “Teaching About Classics Pedagogy in the 21st Century,” “Classics in Action: How to Engage with the Public,” and more. Maybe it’s just that nobody tweeted about them?

In my experience the first week of a new job one is either left alone and bored for long periods while training is being organized, or one is run off one’s feet.  Guess which last week was for me? There’s also some “work for hire” language in the temp agency paperwork that makes me uncomfortable, so I’ll be blogging exclusively on my own time, which has many other demands on it already, such as 3rd grade spelling homework.  Two quick notes, though:

Following swiftly on the heels of the Bing Scholar outreach into Arts and Humanities, Google has opened up its “Citations” program to all comers.  What this means is you can sign up to manage a page for yourself as a Google Scholar author, verify that scholarly works Google Scholar identifies as by you are actually by you, and link out to a web site (hmm, following on Chuck Jones’s post about the prevalence of full-text papers in Institutional Repositories and desirability of an index thereto, why not link to a place scholars can download .pdfs of your work?)  There are also the beginnings of citation metrics, a feature Microsoft Academic Search is also developing, both as a challenge to the most commonly used metrics in (subscription-based) Science Citation Index at Web of Science.

Here’s a link to my citations page, if you want to see what it looks like.  Obviously if your name is as uncommon as mine, you’re probably easily findable in Google Scholar anyway, but if you share a name with many scholars in many fields, Google Scholar Citations is a great way to make your work more easily findable amidst the mass of Karen Joneses out there.

On another topic, I sadly neglected to note who brought to my attention the American Sociological Association’s call for a Wikipedia Initiative among scholars in that field.  Hat tip to somebody, probably Chuck Jones or David Meadows!  The essay linked above can be boiled down to: Think Wikipedia stinks for sociology? Well, people are going to keep using it, so why not make it better?  Gabriel Bodard bruited the idea of a Classics Wikipedia Hack Day on Twitter a while back, but enthusiasm was somewhat limited.  I myself was a bit daunted when I set out to be a one-woman Wikipedia Classics Hacker, and wrote about some reasons why.  But I still think it would be valuable, and one might even argue that it’s necessary, for scholars to improve Wikipedia articles in their fields. I just can’t quite see yet how to make it happen, and I hope the Sociologists find a good way forward with this.

Please consider the following assessment of Microsoft Academic Search, as it seems to be formally called, an addendum to my long post
Comparing citation searching: Google, Bing, Google Scholar, Web of Science, L’Annee originally written in October 2009. (You know in my mind it’s just going to be Bing Scholar, forever and ever.)

Short reminder of the method – I vanity searched myself, under the names “Phoebe Acheson” and “Phoebe E. Acheson” (with and without quotes if the search engine supported them) and reported on how much of my professional work was found.

Microsoft Academic Search (http://academic.research.microsoft.com/)
Microsoft Academic Search is a free online scholarly search engine which debuted in late 2009 with limited discipline coverage, but has expanded a great deal over the course of 2011.  (According to this report, there was no Humanities or Social Science content yet as of July 2011; there is now.) It’s very hard to find a statement of where the content indexed by Microsoft Academic Search comes from; it does not appear to come through direct partnerships with academic publishers, as Google Scholar uses.  Instead, Microsoft Academic Search uses a “focus crawler” and indexes data (including some but not all metadata) from web sites listing citations.  (This information comes from a Microsoft Q&A forum in 2010; a list of the top 100 sites indexed is included as are some specifics about metadata collected.) A major difference from Google Scholar is that Microsoft Academic Search seems to index (and thus search) only citations, not the full text of articles.

As of this writing, Microsoft Academic Search states that it contains 36,684,112 publications by 18,820,566 authors, and is updated weekly, with 123,978 items added last week.  Microsoft Academic Search classifies its content by Domains, which are heavily tilted towards scientific disciplines (Agricultural Science, Materials Science) but now include Arts & Humanities, Business and Economics, and Social Science.  One advantage of the domain classification is that one can limit a search by one or more domains; this fixes a common problem in Google Scholar in which name searches for classical scholars turn up many articles by same or similar-named authors in scientific fields.  Search results can also be narrowed by domain, a very big improvement over Google Scholar.  How the Domains are assigned is not stated, of course, so interdisciplinary topics might be tricky to place accurately.

When I searched for Phoebe Acheson, a box above the results set asked me if I was searching for one of two authors, Phoebe Acheson or Phoebe E. Acheson (I have published under both names).  For a more common name – I used Steve Thompson – a long list of possibilities appears, but at least some of them are distinguished by academic affiliations, and a few have a photo!  It is possible to create and account, log in and add information to Microsoft Academic Search, and one thing a researcher can do is “claim” her own articles and create a profile (and apparently upload a picture.)  (Google Scholar has a feature like this which came out last summer, but I signed up on the wait list to claim my account then and still haven’t heard back from them.)

Microsoft Academic Search found 4 publications for me, and they are all works that I authored or co-authored.  One publication is listed twice; apparently the algorithm is not too good at detecting duplicates, as the only difference is the absence of page numbers in one of the citations. A check of Google Scholar using the search Phoebe Acheson turns up a total of 275 citations, but only the top 5 are actually things I published.  Thus, while Google Scholar includes more erroneous results, it also includes more correct results (and remember, it is searching the full text of articles – so it finds any publications that mention my name).  I would guess that Microsoft Academic Search will improve in this area, as Humanities and Social Science domains are new to the system and presumably growing.  Microsoft Academic Search, like Google Scholar, includes a citation index feature allowing one to see other works which have cited a paper.  This feature also suffers from the limited content of Microsoft Academic Search; a paper listed as cited 14 times in Google Scholar has no citations in Microsoft, and another cited 8 times in Google Scholar is cited once in Microsoft.  Since Microsoft Academic Scholar is using this citation information to develop citation metrics (see this Nature article), the speedy growth of the material set indexed by Microsoft is urgent to make the numbers have real meaning.

So, the content for the Humanities and Social Sciences is very limited still.  Where Microsoft Academic Search shines, and challenges Google Scholar, is the added features.  The ability to facet a search by domain and the existence of author pages (here’s Jack L. Davis) were mentioned above.  There are also pages for journals (here’s Hesperia), built in citation graphs and co-author webs, and various other neat bells and whistles (a Call For Proposal search that can specify by location of the conference – I guess for when you’re dying to visit Florence for work!)

I recommend most classics scholars and students check Google Scholar when searching for articles on a topic, in addition to looking in  discipline-specific bibliographic sources.  (I also LOVE it for citation-checking – when you’ve copied something down wrong, or can’t remember a subtitle, Google Scholar is almost always the fastest way to get the right information.)  Microsoft Academic Search is not yet ready to challenge Google Scholar for classicists, based simply on the content available.  But if the content continues to grow, it could become a strong challenger.  And I think that junior academics seeking to manage their online visibility and findability owe it to themselves to spend an hour logging on, claiming their author page, and adding any missing citations (you can even link to a full-text paper or add a .pdf).  Like Academia.edu, which I have discussed in this space, Microsoft Academic Search is a place you can be found, so it behooves you to make the information about you there as full and accurate as possible.

Last year I did an introductory post on Open Access Week for classicists; you might click through for a refresher.

I also used the occasion of Open Access Week in 2010 to debut the Ancient World Open Bibliographies blog, which collects open-access bibliographies for ancient studies.  The blog begat a wiki which now lists and links to over 450 bibliographies, with a special focus on the classical world, but with broad coverage of the lands around the Mediterranean and some dips into places further abroad.  I celebrate all those scholars who have made their bibliographies – valuable research tools – available to the internet-enabled public.  Thank you!

Content:

• Volume 80 (2009) was added in August.
• 2200 records from Volume 81 (2010) were added in June, and all of Volume 81 (2010) will be available at the end of 2011.  Nice to see them getting so prompt!

New Features:

• Set alerts for searches that you’ve done and saved in your history. The online user guide gives directions for doing this. I haven’t tried it, but the blog post says this searches  new updates to the database and sends you an email.  Since L’Annee does not update very frequently, this is less useful than search alerts in other article databases which update weekly or even daily, but still worth a try if you tend to forget to check L’Annee.
• L’Annee offers an RSS feed of all new entries. Again, nice feature, but given the way L’Annee currently updates, a dump 2-3 times a year of thousands of new entries via RSS might be overwhelming! If you use an RSS reader that allows you to filter or search entries, this might work for you.
• L’Annee online is now Z39.50-compliant (Z39.50 is a library tech standard for interoperability). The practical result of this for users is that EndNote users can now download a filter that will allow them to search L’Annee online from within EndNote.  Download the .enz file posted on the APA web site to do this.

Taking over the role of Library Liaison to Classics will be my good friend and colleague Emily Luken, who already serves as the liaison to Religion and Philosophy at UGA.  She will be keeping up the office hour in the Alexander Room (currently Thursdays at 2:30pm) and working with Classics faculty to teach students about research resources. UGA-affiliated readers, do not hesitate to get in touch with her about anything related to research or the library.

I am leaving UGA due to a family move to Cincinnati, OH, which is a little amusing as it is the city where I was born, then later studied for a PhD and met my husband (in, of course, the library.)  I am just beginning to look for a library position in Cincinnati and would certainly welcome any professional contacts.  While in this forum my librarian hat is the garland of a classics librarian, I have worked in academic library general reference for 9 years, done library instruction for 3, and could find a good fit in a variety of academic or research settings.

I plan to continue blogging about classics research resources here, whatever position I end up in, but my frequency may be a reduced. Please be patient, and don’t unsubscribe!

Note that the “New Titles” interface of the UGA library catalog is open to the public, with keyword searching possible, and results that can be sorted by call number, author, or title.

Works of interest to those in Classics and related fields include the following (in LC call number order); as always, the boundaries for inclusion at the fringes of the discipline are somewhat arbitrary, depending on what struck me as interesting this month!

• Socrates and philosophy in the dialogues of Plato, Peterson, Sandra, 1940-
  Location: Main Library 6th floor B395 .P3865 2011
• Nicomachean ethics, Aristotle.
  Location: Main Library 6th floor B430.A5 B37 2011
• In pursuit of the good: intellect and action in Aristotle’s Ethics, 1st Paul Dry Books ed., Salem, Eric.
  Location: Main Library 6th floor B430 .S25 2010
• Moral psychology and human action in Aristotle
  Location: Main Library 6th floor B491.E7 M67 2011
• Aristotle on Time: A Study of the Physics, Roark, Tony,
  Location: Main Library 6th floor B491.T5 R53 2011
• Becoming God: pure reason in early Greek philosophy, Miller, Patrick L. (Patrick Lee), 1970-
  Location: Main Library 6th floor B505 .M64 2011
• New essays on ancient Pyrrhonism
  Location: Main Library 6th floor B525 .N49 2011
• Goddesses in world culture
  Location: Main Library 6th floor BL473.5 .G64 2011
• Companion to Greek mythology
  Location: Main Library 6th floor BL783 .C66 2011
• Unbinding Medea: interdisciplinary approaches to a classical myth from antiquity to the 21st century
  Location: Main Library 6th floor BL820.M37 U53 2010
• Ausgewahlte kleine Schriften zur Patrologie, Kirchengeschichte und christlichen Archaologie, Dassmann, Ernst.
  Location: Main Library 6th floor BR128.A2 J31 v. 37
• Hadrian and the Christians
  Location: Main Library 6th floor BR162.3 .H33 2010
• Early Christian dress: gender, virtue, and authority, 1st ed., Upson-Saia, Kristi, 1974-
  Location: Main Library 6th floor BT708 .U67 2011
• Full circle: how the classical world came back to us, Mount, Ferdinand, 1939-
  Location: Main Library 2nd floor CB358 .M68 2010
• Histoire et archeologie.
  Location: Main Library 2nd floor CC3 .H5
• Winding Dali’s clock: the construction of a fuzzy temporal-GIS for archaeology, Green, Christopher Thomas.
  Location: Main Library 2nd floor Folio CC75.7 .G74 2011
• Quantitative analysis in archaeology, VanPool, Todd L., 1968-
  Location: Main Library 2nd floor CC75.7 .V36 2011
• Archaeology, soil- and life-sciences applied to enclosures and fields : proceedings of the session ‘From microprobe to spatial analysis — Enclosed and buried surfaces as key sources in Archaeology and Pedology’, European Association of Archaeologists 12t
  Location: Main Library 2nd floor CC79.S6 A73 2011
• Experimentation and interpretation: the use of experimental archaeology in the study of the past
  Location: Main Library 2nd floor CC81.5 .E965 2011
• Handbook of postcolonial archaeology
  Location: Main Library 2nd floor CC175 .H36 2010
• Neolithic to Saxon social and environmental change at Mount Farm, Berinsfield, Dorchester-on-Thames, Lambrick, George.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor Folio DA90 .O38 no. 19
• Late Roman towns in Britain: rethinking change and decline, Rogers, Adam, 1981-
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DA145 .R733 2011
• Iron age and Romano-British agriculture in the north Gloucestershire Severn Vale
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DA670.G5 I766 2008
• Roman Birmingham 3: excavations at Metchley Roman Fort 1999-2001 and 2004-2005: western settlement, the livestock complex and the western defences, Jones, A. E. (Alexis Edward), 1956-
  Location: Main Library 4th floor Folio DA690.B6 J66 2011
• Collezione di antichita di Palazzo Lancellotti ai Coronari: archeologia, architettura, restauro
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DE1 .S78 v. 34
• Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans, Plutarch.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DE7 .P55 1941
• Cosmopolis: imagining community in late classical Athens and the early Roman Empire, Richter, Daniel S.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DE71 .R53 2011
• Handbook for classical research, Schaps, David M.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DE71 .S27 2011
• Greek city walls of the Archaic period, 900-480 BC, Frederiksen, Rune.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DF89 .F74 2011
• Greek art and archaeology, 5th ed., Pedley, John Griffiths.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DF130 .P44 2012
• Moni Odigitria: a prepalatial cemetery and its environs in the Asterousia, southern Crete, Vasilakes, Antones.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DF221.C8 V28 2010
• Hellenistic democracies: freedom, independence and political procedure in some east Greek city-states, Carlsson, Susanne.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DF235.3 .C37 2010
• Hellenistic Karia: proceedings of the First International Conference on Hellenistic Karia, Oxford, 29 June-2 July 2006 International conference on Hellenistic Karia (1st : 2006 : Oxford, England)
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DF261.C28 H45 2010
• Ceramique protobyzantine de Delphes: une production et son contexte, Petridis, Platon.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DF261.D35 C47 2010
• Sparta: the body politic, International Sparta Seminar.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DF261.S8 I58 2010
• Prodosia: la notion et l’acte de trahison dans l’Athenes du Ve siecle : recherche sur la construction de l’identite athenienne, Bottineau, Anne Queyrel.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DF277 .B68 2010
• Cite des reseaux: Athenes et ses associations, VIe-Ier siecle av. J.-C., Ismard, Paulin.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DF285 .I75 2010
• Rome: an Oxford archaeological guide, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded, Claridge, Amanda.
  Location: Main Library 1st floor Reference Main Ref DG62 .C53 2010
• Digging and dealing in eighteenth-century Rome, Bignamini, Ilaria, 1952-2001.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DG65 .B54 2010
• Cuma: atti del quarantottestimo Convegno di studi sulla Magna Grecia, Taranto 27 settembre-1 ottobre 2008 Convegno di studi sulla Magna Grecia (48th : 2008 : Taranto, Italy)
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DG70.C9 C659 2008
• Figures de l’identite: naissance et destin des modeles communautaires dans le monde romain
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DG78 .F49 2010
• Praxis municipale dans l’Occident romain
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DG87 .P73 2010
• Complete Roman emperor: imperial life at court and on campaign, Sommer, Michael, 1970-
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DG271 .S66 2010
• Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge, Van Dam, Raymond.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DG315 .V36 2011
• Instrumental de hierro de epoca romana y de la Antiguedad Tardia en el N.E. de la Peninsula Iberica, Casas i Genover, J. (Josep)
  Location: Main Library 4th floor Folio DP44 .C378 2011
• Studies on Iron Age Moab and neighbouring areas in honour of Michele Daviau
  Location: Main Library 4th floor Folio DS154.9.M6 S78 2009
• Cites de Carie : Harpasa, Bargasa, Orthosia dans l’antiquite, Debord, Pierre.
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DS156.C33 D43 2010
• Cities of Pamphylia, Grainger, John D., 1939-
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DS156.P27 G73 2009
• Between empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in late antiquity, Fisher, Greg, 1976-
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DS286 .F57 2011
• Processo di Isidoro: Roma e Alessandria nel primo secolo, Magnani, Adriano, 1975-
  Location: Main Library 4th floor DT93 .M47 2009
• Barbarians of ancient Europe: realities and interactions
  Location: Main Library 2nd floor GN539 .B27 2011
• Organizing Bronze age societies: the Mediterranean, Central Europe, and Scandinavia compared
  Location: Main Library 2nd floor GN778.22.I8 O74 2010
• Slavery in the late Roman world, AD 275-425, Harper, Kyle, 1979-
  Location: Main Library 5th floor HT863 .H36 2011
• Demos avant la democratie : mot, concepts, realites historiques, Werlings, Marie-Josephine.
  Location: Main Library 6th floor JC75.D36 W47 2010
• From Pella to Gandhara: hybridisation and identity in the art and architecture of the Hellenistic East
  Location: Main Library 7th floor Folio N5630 .F86 2011
• Art of Building in the Classical World: Vision, Craftsmanship, and Linear Perspective in Greek and Roman Architecture, Senseney, John R. (John Robert), 1969-
  Location: Main Library 7th floor NA2750 .S45 2011
• Deliciae fictiles I : architectural terracottas in ancient Italy: images of gods, monsters and heroes: proceedings of the international conference held in Rome (Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia, Royal Netherlands Institute) and Syracuse (Museo A 1st. International Conference on Central Italic Architectural Terracottas (4th : 2009 : Royal Netherlands Institute and Museo Archeologico Regionale “Paolo Orsi”)
  Location: Main Library 7th floor NA3700 .I58 2009
• Acropolis Museum, Athens, Tschumi, Bernard, 1944-
  Location: Main Library 7th floor NA6700.A84 T73 2010
• Codrus Painter: iconography and reception of Athenian vases in the age of Pericles, Avramidou, Amalia.
  Location: Main Library 7th floor ND115.C63 A97 2011
• Orality and literacy: reflections across disciplines
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor P35 .O73 2011
• Literatur der archaischen und klassischen Zeit
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA25 .H24 ser. 7 sect. 1 rev. 2011
• Noms du style: dans l’antiquite greco-latine
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA184 .N66 2010
• Scribblers, scupltors, and scribes: a companion to Wheelock’s Latin and other introductory textbooks, 1st ed., LaFleur, Richard A.
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA2095 .L25 2010
• Reading ancient slavery
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA3015.S55 R42 2011
• Why Athens? : a reappraisal of tragic politics
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA3133 .W49 2011
• Theater of the people: spectators and society in ancient Athens, 1st ed., Roselli, David Kawalko.
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA3203 .R57 2011
• Papiri del romanzo antico: atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Firenze, 11-12 giugno 2009 Convegno sui papiri del romanzo antico (2009: Florence, Italy)
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA3343 .C66 2009
• Carmina Anacreontea und Anakreon: ein literarisches Generationenverhaltnis, Muller, Alexander.
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA3865.Z5 M85 2010
• Omero: l’autore necessario, 1. ed. italiana., Nannini, Simonetta, 1951-
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA4037 .N363 2010
• Roman lyric poetry, 2nd ed.
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA6276 .M23 1974
• Forgotten stars: rediscovering Manilius’ Astronomica
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA6500.M6 F67 2011
• Passato remoto: eta mitiche e identita augustea in Ovidio, Labate, Mario.
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA6537 .L285 2010
• Reading sin in the world: the Hamartigenia of Prudentius and the vocation of the responsible reader, Dykes, Anthony.
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA6648.P7 D95 2011
• Sturz des Judas: Kommentar (5,1-163) und Studien zur poetischen Erbauung bei Sedulius, Deerberg, Daniel.
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA6658.S6 D44 2011
• Virgil’s Book of bucolics, the ten eclogues translated into English verse: framed by cues for reading aloud and clues for threading texts and themes, Van Sickle, John.
  Location: Main Library 3rd floor PA6804.B7 V36 2011
• Roman war machine, Peddie, John, 1933-
  Location: Main Library 2nd floor U35 .P44 2004

It turns out, there is an app for that.  In response to the question, “How did you look that up so fast?” the student responded, “I have a Lewis and Short app ($3.99) on my iPhone.”  Turns out there’s an Liddell-Scott-Jones app too ($1.99) – the student said the iPhone 3 supports a Greek keyboard for input and “it was the best $1.99 I ever spent.” Some commenters I’ve read prefer the Lexiphanes app ($3.99) which includes both LSJ and a Homeric lexicon. By the same developer (and Classics PhD candidate), Harry Schmidt, as Lexiphanes is Lexidium ($3.99).  I highly recommend Schmidt’s website for those interested in computer-aided philology – it was new to me and he has interesting posts as well as a not-yet-iPhone program called Andromeda, a “platform for digital philology,” that sounds worth watching.

These aren’t new tools – RogueClassicism reported on Schmidt’s iPhone aps in 2009 – but I have a dumb phone, myself, so they were new to me.  Since I’ve written about portable digital tools for language students in the context of our Kindle experiment, I thought a post was worthwhile. If you have students with iPhones/iPads/iPod Touches (iPods Touch??), you might want to suggest these apps to them for inexpensive dictionaries-on-the-go.  A quick Google suggests that there is an Android LSJ app ($2.99) but it works with a romanized keyboard only; and there’s a Lewis’ A Latin Dictionary app for Android ($2.99) but not one for the full Lewis and Short.

There’s some further discussion on the Textkit boards about reading classical texts on iPhones, if you want to look for more leads for good apps and general commentary on e-texts in classics.

Got another favorite I didn’t find?  Leave a comment or drop me a line.  Thanks!

Since I blogged about the Aaron Swarz/MIT/Jstor downloading foofaraw here, I was very interested to see the announcement by Jstor last week that they are making out-of-copyright works they host available to all.  They explicitly address the Swarz incident in the news release, noting that this project was underway before that occurrence.

What does it mean for access?

…today, we are making journal content on JSTOR published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere, freely available to the public for reading and downloading. This includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals, representing approximately 6% of the total content on JSTOR.

Further, they are exploring various models for individuals unaffiliated with Jstor-subscribing institutions to get access to other content via Jstor as a bundle (as opposed to a per-article fee).  Since this probably requires a lot of individual negotiations with publishers, it may take some time, but it’s a step forward.  Go Team Jstor.

If you can get through one of Miss Lang’s Greek classes, you know that with a similar level of strategic planning, determination, and hard work you can write a book, you can survive in the wilderness, you can save a historic house from demolition, you can fix the plumbing, you can win an election, you can run your own business — whatever you want to do. In fact all that will probably be easier than the Greek was. The fact is that by believing in our abilities so firmly Miss Lang caused us to have those abilities in the rest of our lives, and that is the most amazing gift that a teacher can offer.

From a talk by Eleanor Dickey, at the memorial service for Mabel Lang, April 3 2011, Bryn Mawr College.