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Turning (Virtual) Pages of History

Posted by timothy on from the ancient-literature dept.

Dubber writes "Today the British Library announced this cool web site. A nice blend of quick loading images and voice overs of 10 major books on display. "Turning the Pages" brings together on the web treasures of several world cultures, along with scientific works, e.g. Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook, Elizabeth Blackwell's Herbal and Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica."

4 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. FP? by tpearson · · Score: 1, Insightful

    From what I have seen this appears to be a pretty good site with a good layout and good content.

  2. Well, that was shit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The content on that site is so bad that it is unusable. I give it 10/10 for the idea of making these rare documents available online, 1/10 for the implementation.

    They've built a series of flash applications presenting very low-resolution images that are unnavigable. The "magnify" doesn't help at all - viewing an unusably tiny window of the document. It needs to have:

    (1) High resolution images of the documents.
    (2) Translations of the text so that visitors can understand what the documents say.
    (3) Digitally restored images (photoshopped) to fix the fading and bleeding that some of the sketches have undergone.

    These three points would have made the visit worthwhile. Instead it's a monumental waste of time.

    1. Re:Well, that was shit. by paz5 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      (1) High resolution images of the documents.

      If you look at the link they give you for each of the documents it includes the phrase narrowband. This may mean that there are higher resolution versions of these books. On the main page they also say that they are experiancing very high usage of that portion of the page, and it would be logical to assume they took down the high quality ones until the rush of people subsides.

      (2) Translations of the text so that visitors can understand what the documents say.

      I'd have to agree with you there...

      (3) Digitally restored images (photoshopped) to fix the fading and bleeding that some of the sketches have undergone.

      While this seams like a nice idea, It then isn't really a duplication of the orriginal document. It would also not be needed if they take your second sugestion.

  3. Re:SP? by wafwot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So you wouldn't care if you were to be able to view the pages of Beethoven's 9th symphony? You wouldn't care if you were able to view the original scribblings of Einstein?

    It's not whether or not you can understand what you're reading, it's the idea that you're looking at a piece of history.

    Keep in mind that it's because of people like DaVinci and Galileo, who invented and theorized despite of social (read: religious) stigmas that we have the science and technology that we have today.

    If you don't care at all about the historical value of what's on the linked pages then you have no inherent right to read anything at all that is posted on /. After all, none of this would be here if it weren't for pioneers like them.