BEOWULF HITS THE NET

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and ARCHIVES. We apologise for any duplication. Please feel free to
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The Electronic Beowulf project is pleased to announce that a few test
images from the Beowulf manuscript (British Library, Cotton MS. Vitellius
A.XV) are available for anonymous ftp from the following sites:
beowulf.engl.uky.edu (at the University of Kentucky) in the sub-directory
ftp/pub/beowulf, and othello.bl.uk (at the British Library) in the
sub-directory sys/pub/mss/beowulf. Further details of the technical
reuirements to read the images are in readme files on each of the sites.
These images are being made available to accompany the publication by the
Association of Research Libraries of Kevin Kiernan's paper `Digital
Preservation, Restoration, and Dissemination of Medieval Manuscripts' in
the symposium `Scholarly Publishing on the Electronic Networks', ed. Ann
Okerson. An illustrated copy of Kevin's paper is also available on the
World Wide Web for those with Mosaic and other WWW clients at the
following URL address: http://www.uky.edu/ComputingCenter/Welcome.html
(document title is `Electronic Beowulf').

The Electronic Beowulf is a project that aims to create a digitised image
archive for the text of Beowulf, accessible to users in a variety of
electronic formats. In its first stage of development the project will
produce a full-colour on-line digitized facsimile of Cotton MS. Vitellius
A.XV, available for public use at the British Library, while an
international team of scholars test and evaluate the images for research
and teaching purposes. The images available on the Kentucky and British
Library ftp sites are test images taken in the early stages of the
project. The project will include not only images made directly from the
manuscript under normal light conditions, but also pictures of hidden and
obscured text taken with the aid of ultra-violet and fibre-optic
backlighting. Already, pictures have been taken of more than 150 sections
of the manuscript hidden by paper frames used in restoration of the
manuscript in the 19th century. The use of a digital camera makes the
recording of readings using special light sources much easier than
conventional photography.

In subsequent development through the middle to late 1990s the project
expects not only to refine images and image capture techniques but also
to add to the archive digitised copies of early transcripts, editions and
collations. Already, Professor Whitney Bolton has generously donated to
the British Library the 1817 collation by Conybeare to facilitate its
inclusion in the project, and the Royal Library in Copenhagen has agreed
in principle that the Thorkelin transcripts may be digitised. Hyper-links
will be developed between these elements to provide scholars with a
powerful tool for exploring the whole range of material bearing on the
transmission of the Beowulf text. Ultimately, the project will issue a
range of publications, such as a full colour facsimile in electronic
form, a research package giving access to the full archive, ad teaching
versions for various educational levels.

The Electronic Beowulf is one of the British Library's `Initiatives for
Access', undertaken in pursuit of its commitment to use imaging and
network technology to make its collections more widely available.

The editor of the project is Professor Kevin Kiernan, Department of
English, University of Kentucky (kiernan@beowulf.engl.uky.edu). The
academic directors of the project are Professor Kiernan and Professor
Paul E. Szarmach, State University of New York, Binghamton
(pszarmac@math.ias.edu).

The British Library team is John Bennett, Project Manager
(john.bennett@bl.uk), Andrew Prescott, Manuscript Collections
(andrew.prescott@bl.uk), David French, Collections and Preservation (MSS
Conservation Studio), and Ann Gilbert, Collections and preservation
(Photographic Service).

For more details about the British Library `Initiatives for Access'
contact the information Officer, Jonathan Purday (jon.purday@bl.uk).

Scholarly Publishing on the Electronic Networks, Proceddings of the third
Symposium, ed. Ann Okerson, is published on 14 February 1994. ISBN
0-918006-73-2. 184 pages, 8.5x11, pbk. $20.00 each (plus
postage/shipping/handling). To order, contact ARL Publications. Phone:(+1)
202-296-2296; fax (+1) 202-872-0884; e-mail osap@cni.org (Ann Okerson).