A few nice, new and exciting things have come to my attention, internet-wise, during the last days - so it's time for a link list.

A find of a smelting oven, not too far from here, has been radiocarbon-dated. It's from the 13th century, making it one of the quite late ovens of that type. Read more about it (and see pics) in the Schauhuette blog.

If you are more into graphics design, you might be interested in having a look at the Elephants of Typography.

There's something new out regarding the finds of Lengberg - parts of the find are presented in the book "The Tudor Child". Beatrix Nutz has also made a website about this in German and in English, including some additional information about the pieces that will not be in the book.

There will be a conference about children's garments in Krefeld in May; the German language info page is here.

And finally, something not so nice: A 15 year old girl on the Maledives was raped by her stepfather - and was then sentenced to public flogging because she had sex while not married. I won't go into that further, because it's obviously so, so wrong on so, so many levels. The only positive thing about it is that word got out, and now there is a public outcry about it, and a petition running to get the Maledives government to abolish that law and institute better protection for rape victims (and actual prosecution for the criminals!). It's run by Avaaz, and signing is easy the first time and even easier once you have registered in their network.

I have been spring cleaning the bookshelf - there are quite a few journal issues that I have two copies of, plus a handful of other books just taking up shelf space since I do not use or need them.

It's mostly Exar Bilanz books and GHWK journal items, but a few other things are on the list as well. The list is German (since most of the books are as well). If you are interested, please download the list in .pdf format and have a look. I'd be happy for these things to find a new home where they will be appreciated!

There are more and more libraries that have digitised manuscripts, in a very decent quality, and they can be leafed through for free on the Internet. (I love the Internet.)

One example that I recently stumbled across: The Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart. (The link will take you directly to the list of manuscripts; there are other categories on the left-hand side. The page is only German, though.) When you click on one of the manuscript titles, it opens in a viewer and you can look your way through the entire book.

Speaking of books, there is new software out - it's called Booksorber and is supposed to turn your camera into a high-speed, high-quality scanning device. I have already downloaded the demo, but not tested it yet. If this works as well as the demonstration pictures on the homepage promise... I will definitely buy it and be a very happy woman.

Speaking even more of books, my library database sorting and ordering is coming along - there are much less unaccounted books in there now than were before, though it is still a sizable heap. Real-life ordering and sorting of books has also taken place and lead to me realising I have quite a few duplicate copies of journals (Experimentelle Archäologie and Zeitschrift für Waffen- und Kostümkunde, mostly). So a new item on my to-do list: make a list (ha!) and offer those for sale...

First of all, one of those links I mentioned a good while ago: the Cambridge Digital Library. There's actually two sites, and older and a new one, listing some books that are digitised either partly or (in case of the newer site) cover-to-cover. The link goes to the old one (which has a link to the new one right on top).

Unfortunately, my standard tests of searchability (using the terms "spinning wheel", "spinning" and "spindle", sometimes also "wool" and "distaff") did not yield any results, and it does not seem as if there are keywords matched to the pages or illuminations. Still, it's old books with pics, online for free.

More old books, online for free (provided they are already public domain) can be found in the HathiTrust Library. There is the possibility to create a login and put together a collection of items, or browse others' collections. That includes 18th century cookbooks, for those of you who favour an old-fashioned roast.

And speaking of books... have you ever wondered why some folks offer out-of-print (or even still in print) books on amazon for really, really ridiculously high prices? It seems that pricing algorithms are to blame. Those companies don't even set the prices themselves, they are having a programme do that, which can lead to interesting results - as described here.

That was not so miscellaneous, right? I can change that.

Here. Gratuitous cat pic.

Boydell & Brewer is having a promotion and special offer - there's a discount for the Medieval Clothing and Textiles series (including pre-orders of the next volume).

And even more spectacular: They offer free shipping for online orders at the moment, globally (which is really nice for those of us not from the UK) and there's a special list for reenactors with 25% off (remember to enter the promo code when ordering online during the checkout - code's to be found at the very end of the .pdf).

Now please excuse me while I look at those books...

If you have never heard about it, the Mühlberg-Ensemble is a complex of buildings in Kempten, southern Germany, where lots of organic material from c. 1470 to 1580 were found in the dead floors and other fillable parts of the building structures.

They were excavated several years back, and now vol. 3 of the publication of the finds is finally out! 

Rainer Atzbach / Ingolf Ericsson (eds), Die Ausgrabungen im Mühlberg-Ensemble (Kempten). Metall, Holz und Textil. Bamberger Schriften zur Archäologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit 3 =
Mühlbergforschungen Kempten (Allgäu) 3 (Bonn 2011).
362 S., zahlr. (tls farb.) Abb., 1 CD-ROM, 30 cm. (Bamberger Schriften z. Archäol. d. Mittelalters u. d. Neuzeit, 3/ Mühlbergforsch. Kempten, 3) Ln,
978-3-7749-3756-7, € 59,-

The volume contains the results of excavations in the basement plus the evaluation and publication of the metal and wooden finds. In addition, Antoinette Rast-Eicher and Klaus Tidow wrote about the textile finds from the buildings. You can find a table of contents and a German/English summary here (pdf file).


The book can be ordered from the publishing house or via your local bookshop. I already have a copy, but have not yet managed to take a good look into it - some report about it will follow as soon as I find the time.

Books are just like pictures. They are lovely to have, wonderful to peruse, and a pain to organise. And it's immensely helpful to organise them - having keywords and tags to search pictures, and having keywords and notes to check whether a book was helpful or not. Plus a bibliography programme can help with citations - and save a major pain when writing.

There are several programmes on the market, the two best-known of which are probably Zotero (a free plug-in for Firefox) and Endnote (a commercial stand-alone programme).

Just recently, I have re-assessed Zotero as a possible alternative to my usual bibliography programme (which is Endnote). There are pros and cons for each of these two programmes, but one of the best comparisons I have found yet is this one from profhacker. So, even though my version of Endnote is quite a few years old now already - from how everything in Endnote is integrated in my workflow, I'll stay with it.

If you do not have a bibliography programme yet or are not totally content with yours, though, you might want to check out Zotero. After all, it's free - so it can't hurt to try.