[HN Gopher] The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online
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The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online
Author : ColinWright
Score : 228 points
Date : 2024-10-06 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
| jeffbee wrote:
| Instead of the popup and affiliate-link-laden article, you could
| go right to it:
| https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/works/hm50tr726?lo...
| senko wrote:
| ... and be forced to complete a captcha before getting 503
| service unavailable.
| mepian wrote:
| "The requested URL was rejected. Please consult with your
| administrator. Error 503 - Service Unavailable"
| mywacaday wrote:
| Haven't seen a hug of death in a while.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Someone's Sunday just got ruined
| g40694 wrote:
| the indignity of the entire experience is comedic, and we've
| come to accept it. the op article is empty aggregation, a
| little superficial bit of dopamine noise, that's exclusively
| parasitizing on actual content. the direct link is probably
| better, but it throws a CAPCHA for me, where I need to click on
| Indian men on motorcycles to teach an AI what a motorcycle is.
| sister comment is reporting that the underlying site is down
| anyway, despite the "protection" provided by the internet
| muscle services.
|
| which makes one wonder, why even go looking at the book of
| kells, like, who among the hackernews readership will sit down
| with an iPad or other high resolution device to peruse the
| entirety of the book at leisure, inspecting the subtle details
| of the illumination, taking notes etc.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| it is a treasure of culture, available to the general public.
| Support your local library.
| g40694 wrote:
| I don't understand the point you're trying to make and how
| it relates to what I said.
|
| the book of kell is available both as a facsimile from
| specialist publishers (/my/ local library has it in
| extended rotation) and as a 2006 dvd from trinity college
| library.
|
| but I'm not even talking about that
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > why even go looking at the book of kells ... etc
| g40694 wrote:
| why even go looking at the book of kells is the sentiment
| about the deliberate versus knee jerk information
| consumption, which was prompted by the reflection on the
| levels of ugliness and indignity supporting the knew jerk
| consumption. it wasn't a comment on the value of book of
| kells, or the effort of making it available to the
| public.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The book of Kells is gorgeous and well worth a visit.
|
| If you are in Dublin and enjoy this sort of thing, _please_ also
| take the very short walk over to the Chester Beatty Library
| (https://chesterbeatty.ie/) as well. It's free and has an
| absolutely fantastic collection of ancient and sacred
| manuscripts. I was lucky enough to live across the street from it
| for several years and it remains one of my favourite museums in
| the world.
| grujicd wrote:
| Chester Beatty is a gem. I went into it not expecting much from
| "museum of books". But it's also in a way a museum of world's
| religions, which are tightly connected to writing and books. As
| an atheist who has low opinion on value of religion because of
| all the deaths they were and still are responsible for, it
| reminded me of their positive role in history. When you see all
| those ancient religious books you begin to question whether we
| would have writing at all without them? Who would go through a
| painstaking process of duplicating books before Gutenberg if
| not men devoting their lives to God? Thus carrying light of
| civilization and creating basis and tools for science to
| progress later. I know this is not some great revelation, but I
| felt enlightened a bit after leaving Chester Beatty.
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| Your post reminded me of the story "A canticle for
| leibowitz".
|
| It explores many of the ideas you've mentioned. I recommend
| reading it if you haven't already. I think you'd enjoy it.
| grujicd wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation, looks like the kind of book
| I'd enjoy.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Agreed! We went last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I
| understand that the Long Room in the Old Library is mostly
| empty for renovations, but the Book has been moved to a
| dedicated building during this time.
|
| Pro-tip to any potential visitors: they turn the pages every so
| often, and I have heard some travel bloggers complain that the
| pages on display when they went weren't very interesting, but
| the university will show you what pages of the book of Kells
| are currently on display: https://www.visittrinity.ie/book-of-
| kells-pages-on-display/
|
| At the moment, it appears that they have it open to a pair of
| canon tables which have some really lovely illuminations.
| VagabundoP wrote:
| They have some gorgeous Asian exhibits as well from what I
| remember.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| The Chester Beatty Library has a much larger collection than is
| shown at any one time. Many sacred texts, but also much else,
| including some printed news-sheets from the French Revolution.
| And a lot of Chinese and Japanese stuff, including some
| gorgeous jade snuffboxes.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| There's also a pretty decent eatery!
|
| Another amazing library, though one that you can't really
| access, is the Edward Worth library at Dr Steevens' Hospital,
| beside Heuston train station.
|
| https://edwardworthlibrary.ie/
|
| He had collected the books over his lifetime and bequeathed the
| collection to the hospital, under conditions that were to
| result in the absolute protection of the books. The story of
| the collection's history is itself worth the visit, and the
| current librarians are always welcoming if you call in advance.
| I was at a lecture there last week, and they took great pains
| to tell everybody to come back.
| gambiting wrote:
| I saw it in person few months ago, and well......it's weird.
| The quality of the caligraphy and drawings is such that when
| you see it in person...it's completely underwhelming. It just
| looks like a very high quality print - which obviously speaks
| volumes about the quality of penmanship of something that is so
| crazy old. But the presentation room where the pages were shown
| magnified and the library afterwards were(to me) 100x more
| interesting than the "main event". I just saw it, went "huh"
| and that was about it. I guess seeing Mona Lisa in person must
| be similar - hundreds of people trying to take a peek, and it's
| far away from you behind glass so you can't really appreciate
| the details.
| s_dev wrote:
| The animated film 'The Secret of Kells' is great and well worth a
| watch. Far more accessible/relatable to modern audiences than
| this historical Bible that was dug up in a field in Kells. I'm
| glad it got a mention but the other guy is right -- the link
| should have been to the digitized book.
| CalRobert wrote:
| That studio is amazingly good. The Breadwinner is harrowing but
| fantastic.
| lemming wrote:
| The others in the Irish mythology series are really great too
| - Song of the Sea is my favourite. Great to watch with kids,
| but also can be enjoyed with no embarrassment by adults!
| bdz wrote:
| Contrary to everyone I think it was pretty mediocre. The
| significance of the book is barely covered and the contents of
| it are not mentioned at all. The story itself is dancing around
| the "message of the book" and how it prevails over everything
| (see the allegory with the abbey's wall) but somehow they just
| never say it's the four Gospels of the New Testament which are
| the most important texts of Christianity. If you don't know
| what the Book of Kells _really is_ then what's left from the
| film itself? Not so much just a generic fantasy story.
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| Yes. As someone who practices Western calligraphy, I expected
| a lot more about the book from the movie. It was mostly style
| kind of fable with the book as a prop.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| I took it to describe a more expansive history of Irish
| spirituality, how neopaganism is recovering the legends and
| traditions that Irish diaspora took with them to the rest of
| the world, or perhaps were forgotten across generations. How
| Ireland emerges as a post-Christian society, but remains
| embattled with culture wars and difficult relations with the
| UK.
|
| The Gaeltacht today is not unlike that little monastic
| fortress at Kells.
| UberFly wrote:
| Agreed. Really unique and beautifully done.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Is this a different one from the one I found at Global Grey's
| Collection https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/book-of-kells-
| ebook.html
|
| Global Grey was popular on HN a few years back, and I bought the
| whole collection.
| g40694 wrote:
| the og scan of book of kells was done by a Swiss publisher in
| the early 90s. since you can't copyright a scan, and the book
| itself is in public domain, anyone can then take the scans (if
| they can get hands on the high dpi originals or whatever, or do
| a high dpi scan of the reproduction) and publish them as
| whatever they want. "the complete encyclopedia of human
| knowledge (only $99.99 if you call now)" "the illuminated
| authoritative book of kells (comes with your own one of a kind
| handmade Irish cross)" etc. you can get the scans themselves
| (afaiu its at matching dpi, if not the same format) from a 2006
| trinity college dvd of book of kells.
|
| the op is an announcement of the completed rescan effort, with
| modern technologies and modern dpis. with a companion iPad app
| and a website that have consumer grade renditions of those
| modern research grade scans.
| oliwarner wrote:
| > you can't copyright a scan
|
| Why not? It's derivative but it's still work.
| luma wrote:
| Presumably, because it isn't transformative enough to
| constitute a derivative work. Otherwise, making a copy of
| free works would allow one to put those works back under
| copyright.
| KyleBrandt wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Co
| r....
|
| https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-
| Art...
| g40694 wrote:
| it's a statement of fact, so we can just leave it at that.
| but the explanation as I understand it and I'm not a
| lawyer, is that scan or a facsimile is a mechanism of
| reproduction, and the act of reproduction doesn't give you
| copyright. work, derivative work, original work,
| demonstration of originality have all precise definitions,
| but in laymen terms which is also my understanding, your
| derivative work has to be creative and original in its own
| right to have a copyright.
| jll29 wrote:
| "Work" as such is not protectable; it lacks the creative
| element that e.g. a translation of a book into another
| language exhibits.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| The animated film (same prod crew that made Song of the Sea) is
| excellent.
| spl757 wrote:
| The error message "The requested URL was rejected. Please consult
| with your administrator." is from an F5 Networks Application
| Security Manager firewall and can usually be addessed by clearing
| certain cookies in your browser.
|
| I was able to get it to load using Chrome with all cookies
| cleared, but it does appear to be getting the "hug of death" as
| well as mywacaday says in another comment.
| calibas wrote:
| I only see one cookie, for the captcha, and removing that just
| forces me to solve the captcha again.
|
| The 503 error itself doesn't seem to be cookie related, looks
| like the site can't keep up with the kind of traffic they're
| getting.
|
| Also, if clearing cookies prevents errors, it's likely related
| to caching. Depending on the server configuration, things like
| authentication cookies will cause the session to bypass caches
| for certain resources.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| I saw the real life Book of Kells earlier this year and it was so
| pristine and high quality it didn't look real, like seriously
| looked like a modern fancy reprint, it was a bit confusing!
| squiffsquiff wrote:
| Error 503 - Service Unavailable
| patrickdavey wrote:
| I went to college in Trinity and the Book of Kells is housed in
| the old library.
|
| Once you've finished seeing the book, you head upstairs through
| the Long Room, and that place is just special (they used it as
| the hall of the jedi)
|
| As a student there you could visit for free. I used to just go up
| and hang in the library for 10 mins or so a few times a year.
| Loved it.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Trinity_College_D...
|
| Edit: fix link
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| I once had a class in a room just off the old library. I had to
| go into the Long Room and step over a rope at the end. Very
| cool.
| SEJeff wrote:
| First name checks out :)
|
| I promised a coworker up north a bit in Meath that one day I'd
| come visit him and got that chance about seven years ago. Along
| the way we did the tourist in Dublin thing and part of it was
| the trinity long room and book of kells. Amusingly, a cabbie
| was asking me what I loved about Dublin and I said the history.
| He asked what in specific and I told him that there is probably
| chewing gum on the ground older than the founding of the United
| States. He got super offended and told me they clean the
| streets in Ireland, but then I mentioned the Aran Islands,
| Newgrange, and the Drombeg Stone Circle... What is "old" in
| Ireland is 3000-5000 years old. What is "old" in the USA is a
| few hundred years old at best.
|
| Such a lovely place and people.
| Ovah wrote:
| Unfortunately, they recently removed most of the books from
| that hall due to conservation efforts. I didn't really give the
| feel or atmosphere of an old library.
| maccard wrote:
| I also did the same thing. I probably visited 30 times in the 5
| years I was there. The postgraduate study room next door to it
| (disc shaped building between the old library and the front
| gate) is probably one of the neatest student spaces in the
| university, closely followed by the geography building behind
| it.
| lihaciudaniel wrote:
| If you want more like these drawings , check wikisource
|
| https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Apoca...
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| This is a cool resource, but I'm side-eyeing them characterizing
| it as some new thing when this scan was uploaded more than ten
| years ago (as their own link to the college's archived blog post
| on it shows).
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Glad you said this as it saved me checking my memory.
|
| I first came across the Book of Kells over 20 years ago and I
| swear photos/scans were available online of some pages even
| back then (one of the 'Xp' at least). But certainly thought it
| had already been made available online before (albeit in one of
| those annoying interfaces where it's all tiles to try and stop
| you downloading any of it).
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| I think there was a black-and-white photocopy from the early
| 90s, but the full-color digital one (with an iPad app!) is
| circa 2013.
| UberFly wrote:
| I believe the book was stolen at one point and the gold covers
| were ripped off. It was eventually found buried. Close to being
| gone for good like so many other remarkable items.
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