In the days June 10-11th 2010 at the Fondazione Museo del Tesoro del Duomo e Archivio Capitolare and the Faculty of Arts of the University of Eastern Piedmont in Vercelli (Piedmont) a workshop will be organised with the title Codici miniati: incontro tra arte e scienza. Gli Scriptoria altomedievali (Illuminated manuscripts: meeting among art and science. The early Medieval scriptoria). This initiative is the III edition of the  National day for the multidisciplinary study of illuminated manuscripts; the two previous editions were held in Parma – Biblioteca Palatina and in Modena – Faculty of Arts. The aim of these workshops is to look for a meeting point among activities of scholars from the humanistic side (art historians, palaeographers, linguists) and researchers from the scientific side (chemists, physicians) with reference to the analysis of illuminated manuscripts. These two research fields are at present fairly distant but could find several points of contact, increasing in this way knowledge and  usability of masterpieces such as illuminated manuscripts.

Due to success and interest given by the two previous editions, which were organised as local events, we thought to give an international dimension to the third edition by adding the presence of foreign speakers choosen among experts from both sides. The opportunity to host part of the workshop inside the Biblioteca Capitolare at Vercelli, a site deputed to the conservation and valorisation of a codicological heritage highly relevant at national and international level, and to have the possibility to have a direct look to manuscripts themselves in such an historical framework, imparts an added value to the event.

The argument of the workshop concerns with the Italian early Medieval scriptoria. Italian scholars, highly trained in their respective fields of research, will present scientific and historical-artistic studies concerning illuminated manuscripts from the main Italian scriptoria in the period IV-X century (Nonantola, Bobbio, Vercelli, etc.). It will be an important occasion to discuss about aspects of common interest.

Foreign speakers will bring a highly relevant contribution by presenting studies on early medieval manuscripts from foreign scriptoria, mainly from France and British Isles. The speakers are researchers working at foreign Universities (University of Amsterdam, Kiel, London) or at museums of  great international prestige (British Library at London, Trinity College Library at Dublino, Victoria & Albert Museum at London). Their competence will then be particularly welcome, making it possible to start collaboration on common projects.

The workshop will be organised on two days, June 10th and 11th 2010. The first day, scheduled at the Fondazione Museo del Tesoro del Duomo e Archivio Capitolare inside the Sala del Trono of the Palazzo Arcivescovile at Vercelli, will be devoted to some oral contributions, after whom a guided visit will be proposed to the manuscripts held in the Biblioteca Capitolare. The second day, organised at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Eastern Piedmont – Ala Conventuale of the Sant’Andrea Abbey, will include oral contributions in the morning, a poster session after lunch break and again oral contributions. Publication of a proceedings volume will be realised, as in the previous editions; in this case publication will be either on paper and in online format, spreading information about it on this web site (http://www.arc.unito.it/index.php?lang=en).

Organisation is due to the following committees:
Scientific committee:

* Dott. Maurizio Aceto (Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale)
* Prof. Pietro Baraldi (Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia)
* Dott. Danilo Bersani (Università degli Studi di Parma)
* Prof.ssa Giusi Zanichelli (Università degli Studi di Salerno)

Organising committee:

* Dott. Maurizio Aceto (Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale)
* Dott. Angelo Agostino (Università degli Studi di Torino)
* Dott.ssa Anna Cerutti Garlanda (Coordinatrice dei Comitati Scientifici presso la Fondazione Museo del Tesoro del Duomo e Archivio Capitolare)
* Dott. Timoty Leonardi (Conservatore Manoscritti e Rari presso la Fondazione Museo del Tesoro del Duomo e Archivio Capitolare)
* Prof. Saverio Lomartire (Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale)

For any information please contact:

Dott. Maurizio Aceto
Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Ambiente e della Vita
Università del Piemonte Orientale
Viale Teresa Michel, 11
15100 – Alessandria
phone  +39 0131 360265
print +39 0131 260250
mail maurizio.aceto@mfn.unipmn.it

Posted by: Roberto Rosselli Del Turco (rosselli at ling dot unipi dot it)

Rockville, Maryland.  The organizing committee has released the program for “Balisage 2010: The Markup Conference” to be held in Montreal from 3 to 6 August, 2010.

“Balisage: The Markup Conference” (http://www.balisage.net/) is an annual peer-reviewed XML conference: how to create markup; what it means; hierarchies and overlap; modeling; taxonomies; transformation; query, searching, and retrieval; presentation and accessibility; making systems that make markup dance (or dance faster to a different tune in a smaller space).

Come to lovely Montreal, Canada from August 3rd to 6th for four action-packed days of angle brackets! Here’s a baker dozen (or so) sampling from the much larger list of Balisage 2010 presentations:

• gXML, a new approach to cultivating XML trees in Java
• Java integration of XQuery – an information unit oriented approach
• Reverse modeling for domain-driven engineering of publishing technology
• Managing semantics in XML vocabularies
• XML pipeline processing in the browser
• Where XForms meets the glass: Bridging between data and interaction design
• Schema component paths for schema analysis
• A streaming XSLT processor
• Multi-structured documents and the emergence of annotations vocabularies
• Processing arbitrarily large XML using a persistent DOM
• Automatic upconversion using XProc
• Scripting documents with XQuery
• XQuery design patterns
• Parallel processing and your XML data

Schedule At-a-Glance: http://www.balisage.net/2010/At-A-Glance.html.

Detailed schedule with descriptions: http://www.balisage.net/2010/Program.html.

Pre-conference symposium: XML for the Long Haul: Issues in the Long-term Preservation of XML http://www.balisage.net/longhaul/index.html.

Tower of Modern Babel Contest – Chance to win an Apple 15″ (i5)
MacBook Pro, Apple MacBook Air, or USD $2000: http://www.balisage.net/contest.html.

Posted by: Roberto Rosselli Del Turco (rosselli at ling dot unipi dot it)

Call for applications/papers

ESF-COST Conference on
Networked Humanities: Art History in the Web
Acquafredda di Maratea, Italy, 9-14 October 2010
http://www.esf.org/conferences/10342

Chair: Hubertus Kohle – Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Deutsches Historisches Institut, DE
Programme Committee: Claudine Moulin – Trier University, DE & Lea Rojola – University of Turku, FI

Since the earliest times, new technologies have contributed to profound scientific advances and have transformed the ways we can do research. It is claimed today that the World Wide Web offers revolutionary models of scientific cooperation, which promise to
instantiate a utopian democracy of knowledge. This claim has repeatedly been associated with the development and introduction of a collaborative Web, commonly referred to as Web 2.0 as well as its offspring, a semantically enriched Web 3.0 still in the making The aim of this conference is to bring together art historians and other researchers (including digital humanists) in order to investigate the intersection between the web and collaborative research processes, via an examination of electronic media-based cooperative models in the history of art and beyond.
The conference will not only be an occasion to exchange ideas and present relevant projects in the field,
but, with contributions spanning from art history (and digital art) to philosophy and cultural studies,
from psychology and sociology of knowledge to computer graphics, from semiotics to curatorial practices
it will offer a unique forum for the representation of both diversified and complementary approaches to the topic of Networked humanities.

Conference format:
* lectures by invited high level speakers
* short talks by young & early stage researchers
* poster sessions, round table and open discussion periods
* forward look panel discussion about future developments

Invited Speakers will include:
* Patrick Danowski, CERN Geneva, CH
* Matteo d’Alfonso, Universitdi Bologna, IT
* Francesca Gallo, University of Rome La Sapienza, IT
* Charlie Gere, University of Lancaster, UK
* Gudrun Gersmann, German Historical Institute Paris, FR
* Guenther Goerz, University of Erlangen, Institute of Computer Science, DE * Halina Gottlieb, Interactive Institute, Kista, SE
* Gerhard Nauta, University of Leiden, NL
* Robert Stein, Indianapolis Museum of Arts, US
(List to be completed)

A good number of grants are available for young researchers to cover the conference fee and possibly part of the travel costs. Grant requests should be made by ticking appropriate field(s)
in the paragraph Grant application of the application form (http://www2.esf.org/asp/esfrcaf.asp?confcode=342&meetno=1).

Full conference programme and application form are accessible online from http://www.esf.org/conferences/10342.

ESF-COST Contact for further information: Zuzana Vercinska – Zuzana.Vercinska@cost.eu

Closing date for applications: 18 July 2010

This conference is organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF) in partnership with COST European Cooperation in Science and Technology.

Posted by: Corinne Wininger (clemoal@esf.org).