The Scholarly Communication Institute (http://uvasci.org/) is conducting a study on career preparation in humanities graduate programs. As part of this study, we are administering two confidential surveys: the first is for people on alternative academic career paths (that is, people with graduate training in the humanities and allied fields working beyond the professoriate); the second is for their employers. The study focuses on graduate education practices in North America, but we welcome all participants. The surveys will be open until October 1, 2012.

Humanities scholars come from a wide array of backgrounds and embark on a variety of careers in areas like libraries, museums, archives, higher education and humanities administration, publishing, research and technology, and more. SCI anticipates that data collected during the study will contribute to a deeper understanding of the diversity of career paths that humanities scholars pursue after their graduate studies, while also highlighting opportunities to better prepare students for a range of careers beyond the tenure track.

The study complements the public database that SCI recently created as a way to clarify the breadth of the field, and to foster community among a diverse group (available at http://altacademy.wufoo.com/reports/who-we-are/).

Both the database and the surveys are being administered by Dr. Katina Rogers as part of SCI’s current phase of work — which includes a close concentration on graduate education reform and the preparation of future knowledge workers, educators, and cultural heritage and scholarly communications professionals.

The survey results will help us to make curriculum recommendations so that graduate programs may better serve future students, and anonymized or summarized data will be made available at at a later date via http://uvasci.org. Please contact Katina at katina.rogers@virginia.edu if you’d like to know more.

• Complete the main survey: http://alt-academy.questionpro.com/ • Complete the employer survey: http://alt-academy.employers.questionpro.com/

Thank you in advance for your time and support on this project.

Digital Classicist & Institute of Classical Studies Seminar 2012

Friday July 20th at 16:30
Room G37,
Senate House, Malet Street,
London, WC1E 7HU

Paolo Monella (Centro Linceo, Roma)
‘In the Tower of Babel: Modelling primary sources of multi-testimonial textual transmissions’

ALL WELCOME

This talk aims at discussing a model for digital scholarly editions of texts with a multi-testimonial textual tradition where, for each witness, two layers of digital representation are formally and explicitly distinct, though interrelated: A. The graphical representation of the text of that witness, mirroring its specific encoding system (alphabet, capitalisation, punctuation, word boundaries, scribal abbreviations, page space arrangement etc.); B. The text of that witness in an ‘uniform’ digital encoding, necessary to make the representations of the text of different witnesses digitally comparable. The talk will also explore how TEI P5 can address the theoretical modelling issues involved.

Full abstract is available:
http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2012-08pm.html

The seminar will be followed by wine and refreshments.

For more information please contact Gabriel.Bodard@kcl.ac.uk, Stuart.Dunn@kcl.ac.uk, S.Mahony@ucl.ac.uk, or see the seminar website at http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2012.html

Posted by: Simon Mahony (s.mahony@ucl.ac.uk).

Digital Classicist & Institute of Classical Studies Seminar 2012

Friday July 13th at 16:30
Room G37,
Senate House, Malet Street,
London, WC1E 7HU

Maggie Robb (KCL)
‘Digitising the Prosopography of the Roman Republic’

ALL WELCOME

The history of the Roman republic is the history of a highly competitive aristocratic elite, which oversaw Rome’s remarkable transformation from middling Italian city-state to ruler of a world empire. A great deal of the basic information about the prosopography of the Roman elite has already been collated but the sheer scale and complexity of the material has made complex analysis impracticable. By creating a searchable digital database comprising all known members of the republican elite, the project will open up radically new opportunities for revisiting old questions as well as asking entirely new ones.

Full abstract is available:
http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2012-07mr.html

The seminar will be followed by wine and refreshments.

For more information please contact Gabriel.Bodard@kcl.ac.uk, Stuart.Dunn@kcl.ac.uk, S.Mahony@ucl.ac.uk, or see the seminar website at http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2012.html

Posted by: Simon Mahony (s.mahony@ucl.ac.uk).

Digital Classicist & Institute of Classical Studies Seminar 2012

Friday July 6th at 16:30
Room G22/26 (note room change),
Senate House, Malet Street,
London, WC1E 7HU

Charlotte Tupman (KCL)
‘Digital epigraphy beyond the Classical: creating (inter?)national standards for recording modern and early modern gravestones’

ALL WELCOME

Early modern and modern gravestones are a vast but rapidly decaying historical resource. Weathering, damage, and re-use have all affected the size and scholarly value of this material. There are no agreed standards for recording and publishing gravestones, and recording is fragmentary and inconsistent. However, many of the standards used in the digital publication of Classical and Medieval inscriptions are applicable to modern gravestones: this paper investigates whether they provide a viable method of recording such a large body of data, where the researchers are often not experts in epigraphy, and solutions are suggested for designing a pilot project.

Full abstract is available:
http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2012-06ct.html

The seminar will be followed by wine and refreshments.

For more information please contact Gabriel.Bodard@kcl.ac.uk, Stuart.Dunn@kcl.ac.uk, S.Mahony@ucl.ac.uk, or see the seminar website at http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2012.html

Posted by: Simon Mahony (s.mahony@ucl.ac.uk).

Details of this week’s Digital Classicist & Institute of Classical Studies Seminar 2012

Friday June 22nd at 16:30
Room G37,
Senate House, Malet Street,
London, WC1E 7HU

Alejandro Giacometti (UCL)
Lindsay MacDonald (UCL)
Alberto Campagnolo (University of the Arts)

‘Cultural Heritage Destruction: Documenting Parchment Degradation via Multispectral Imaging’

ALL WELCOME

In this seminar we describe the methodology and present preliminary results of a project using multispectral imaging to document the deterioration of parchment. A series of treatments has been applied to degrade samples from a deaccessioned manuscript using both physical and chemical agents. Each sample has been photographed before and after the treatment by a multispectral imaging system to record the effect of the treatments on both the writing and the parchment. We present the initial imaging of the samples, details on their treatment agents and how they affect the writing and parchment, the final imaging, and some image processing analysis.

Full abstract is available:

The seminar will be followed by wine and refreshments.

For more information please contact Gabriel.Bodard@kcl.ac.uk, Stuart.Dunn@kcl.ac.uk, S.Mahony@ucl.ac.uk, or see the seminar website at

Posted by: Simon Mahony (s.mahony@ucl.ac.uk).