I have been skimming, reading and researching a heap of articles recently (processing them with the help of Qiqqa, as explained some time back).

Article databases and online journal repositories can be a wonderful way to lose a few hours, by a similar thing to the encyclopaedia effect - you sort of hop from one topic to a related one, and from one author to more of that author to another author... well. I think you all know how that ends. If you don't have access, though, it will most probably end in frustration - so many things, such high prices, so little chance to get at them.

One easy way to get article access is to get a library card from a friendly University library in your vicinity. But what if you do not live near one? For the Germans (or those living in Germany), there is good news: Everybody who has a permanent address in Germany can ask for participation in the Nationallizenzen scheme.

You register for this (stating, of course, your German address); then you get sent a letter with your login data. The Nationallizenzen access has a few restrictions, such as moving walls keeping you from the most recent publications and similar, but it's a very nice and convenient way to get at a huge number of articles and e-books that you otherwise would pay several arms and legs for.

So... hooray for access! And now I shall read some more articles. Because I can. (And because I need some more nice references and suggested further reading for, oh, still too many topics of that book project.)

Yesterday I read about flour - especially bleached flour. Which was sorta new to me, bleached flour, erm - that stuff is almost white anyways?

Turns out that flour is actually getting bleached at least in the US, with stuff that I would not necessarily want close to my food thankyouverymuch. (In Germany, bleaching flour was banned in the 1950s. Thank you, Germany. Sometimes your rules are nice.)

With that still freshly in the back of my mind, I was not happy about hearing of TTIP this morning, brought to me by an email about a petition against it. Similarly to the ACTA thing of a while ago, now corporations and politicians want to make a secret trade agreement thingie that will allow them to do wild things to "non-tariff barriers to trade". Which is, basically, the rules about things like which food is ok to sell and which is not, thankyouverymuch. Or data security stuff.

The US folks, it seems, are afraid that such an agreement will make them have stricter rules for their markets. Others are more forthrightly declaring it's a bad idea - a betrayal of the public. It would also give companies the possibility to sue against laws that cut their profit due to some insignificant things such as, for example, banning the bleaching of flour. (Lawsuits like that have actually already happened. This is... wow.) Democracy, who needs that?

So, I don't care on which side you are standing - US or EU, I think it's not a good thing for those who don't happen to be in the saddle of one of the huge companies. If you agree (which I hope you do), please sign one of the petitions against it:
this one at Sum of Us or this one from Campact (German-Language, but you will manage, I'm sure).
Or both, for good measure.

Since it looks like there will be a meeting concerning the agreement on Monday, there's not so much time left - so if you can, please spread the word about it, too!

I joined into Doug's Blogging Carnival last month (here is the digest and link list of all the 60+ bloggers who participated), and I did enjoy this a lot - I rarely blog to a topic that was pre-specified for me, and it's a nice challenge. Plus it has sidetracked me to a number of other archaeology blogs that I peeked into, and it sort of feels like connecting with other blogging archaeologists... even though it might be no "real" connection, if you know what I mean. (Don't fret if you don't. I'm rambling here.)

That said, I have just realised that December is not so very long anymore... so it's time for me to tackle the December questions for the Blogging Archaeology Carnival: What are "the Good, the Bad and the Ugly" of blogging for me?

The Good? There's a stack of things that I like about my blogging. It adds a little element of structure to my day (seldom a bad thing for a freelancer). It keeps me writing, and practising my English (never bad for a second language). I can try to be funny, share some personal things that I am excited about and that I want to get out into the world, help other folks spread the word about events, or blogs, or CfPs.
Also, I have an excuse to rootle around other blogs and investigate stuff and read up on things - it's research for my daily blogging, since I have to have something to write about, right? And I am absolutely delighted if I get a nice comment, or if I meet somebody at a conference or on a fair or at an event and get to hear something like "oh, that is your blog? I've been reading it for ages!"

The Bad of blogging is there, too. Of course. The days when I don't feel like blogging and have to do it anyways - because I am supposed to. Stretches of days when I feel like I have nothing to say that is of any interest to anybody, and that I am blogging such lame stuff that I will lose tons of readers. The times when I have so many links piled up that even though that's plenty of stuff to blog about, I can't get the motivation to get them into something like order and package them into a suitable post. And sometimes I would love to get some more comments, some more feedback, just to have an inkling on how I am doing. (Myself, I'm not much of a commenter on other blogs, too - so I probably should not complain about that one.)

On the Ugly front, though, I am happily almost untouched. I have not gotten any real bad vibes due to blogging, I have not lost jobs or opportunities (at least not that I know of), or had other grievances. The worst that happens to me, blog-wise, is someone re-posting things without acknowledging their source and the occasional spammer attack. There's no way to completely prevent the first, so I just shrug it off; the latter has been greatly reduced by turning comment moderation on for posts that are older than three days or so.

Here you go, Doug - that's my Good, Bad, and Ugly of Blogging.

I got an email comment regarding my post about publishing and money flow from last week - and it's probably worth it to go into a little more detail here.

There's three kinds of getting published - the kind where you get paid for (my favourite!), the kind where you don't see money, and the kind that you pay for yourself.

I've already written about what I think of paying for getting published. Now, for the record - I know that especially in academia, there are circumstances (like you have to get your thesis published, and it's such a fringe topic nobody will ever buy the book, probably) where you will end up paying for getting the book out. Personally, I think that is not good, and even unfair, and I would recommend that if you do need to get the book published with an ISBN number and stuff, try to find a publisher that will offer you decent conditions, or look into PoD and BoD services. (If you feel that you really want to cough up a lot of money just so some big-name academia publishing house's name and logo graces the spine of your book which will technically be on the market but cost a shitload of money so only libraries, if they, will buy it, feel free to do so. Myself, I have a strong opinion on things like that, which you can probably guess from what I have written so far.)

This leaves the two other options for consideration: publishing for free, and getting money for it. I will start with my favourite option. You write a book, you invest a lot of time and money, and nerves, and probably shed some tears or at least metaphorical tears, and wiggle so much on your seat you have pants-wear-and-tear to pay for, and all the black pixels in your computer get all worn out, and so on. You hand the book on to a publishing house, and they wear out some more pixels and chase around electrons and do stuff with ink and paper and advertisement designers and stuff. And then they do maths, and calculations, and then they send out a book, a real honest physical book that smells like newly printed paper, to bookshops and sellers and other people. The publisher deserves money for their work, and the booksellers need to buy their food and pay their rent, and the printing costs money and the warehousing too, so there's not so much money left once that's all paid for and done - but the author has also invested time and effort, a not inconsiderable amount of that, and that should also be rewarded with money. Not just with the good feeling of having a book out (because that won't pay the rent for the author either). I am not expecting the book revenue to add up to a honest freelancing hourly wage, and about every author out there will probably tell you that you have to write really well and really much and really fast to make a half-decent living off writing, and that is for novels and not for science books too - but I would very much like to have something coming in onto my bank account telling me that what I did is appreciated, and rewarded, and I will be able to go have some moderately priced sushi once a year, at the very least.

Now, if you are writing a PhD thesis or something similar, maybe in an esoteric out-there field that you love and few other people even know that it exists... you will have a hard time finding a publishing house that offers you money for it. When I was starting out to write my PhD, I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to publish it in a "normal", not a purely academic, publishing house. So from the very start, I tailored my writing towards that goal - and I was lucky on many counts with that: having a topic that does lend itself to being published regularly (since there is enough interest in that topic in the public), having supervisors who appreciated the style and voice in the writing and did not insist on "academese", finding a wonderfully supportive editor and a good, solid publishing house, and last but not least getting additional funding from VG Wort which made publishing the book at that price possible.

However, I have also written and published for free, plenty of times. All the articles that I have written? There was not a penny passed towards me. That is the third case, and it's the common method in academia - you publish, but you don't get paid.

Here's a snippet of the mail I received:

It does overlap your other articles on a fair price for craft though. By doing it for free am I lowering the costs for everyone? But by not doing it for free it wouldn't get done! The 'payment' I'm getting is things that money can't buy: I enjoy it, can see the longterm benefits from it (my work/ideas/research findings are published, I've gained experience, a reputation, it leaves the door of academia open and improves my ability to get in there later).

Ah, yes. I have firm principles in some areas of my life, and I have wishes that I know will not become true in others - and publishing (academic) articles and getting paid for them is definitely in the "I wish" category.
As in many things in Real Life (TM), there are shades of grey and not just black and white to things; and for some of the folks writing and publishing without getting pay for the article, it's not really an investment of time with nothing in return. If I am doing research and am getting paid for it, I have already been paid for my work - publishing for free is not working for free, in that case. If I am publishing without getting paid in money, I am (as mentioned above) getting non-monetary things back too: an article more to my name, my ideas get spread, maybe I can inspire some nice fruitful dialogue, some research gets furthered. For a freelancer, getting your name known better may be the difference between getting hired for things or not - so I could see it as an investment in a (very special) kind of advertisment for myself.
In my personal case, it might also enable me to get some copies of the book for re-selling, so I still have the chance of making a bit of money after all. What really bugs me a bit, though, is having published an article for free and then seeing said article as the online version with a really hefty price tag on it. Yes, there are costs to the publishing house - but sometimes these prices just seem unrealistically high to me.

But if you don't submit to this? We are, as academics, living in a culture where as a rule you publish your research and articles without getting money from the publishing house. You may get offprints or reduced prices for the printed article, but there is no money flow toward the author; in some cases, there is even Unlawful Flow according to Yog. Publishing for no money is not a too big deal for those who get paid for their research work, as much or all of that writing time is already paid for; it is, however, a serious investment of time with no direct revenue for an independent researcher. So the question is, in some way: can you afford to publish? On the other hand you cannot afford not to publish - to keep in the loop, to keep your doors open should you wish to stay or return to classic academia, to build up your reputation. And to get your research findings out - because unpublished research is a kind of a waste, too.
Best for publication is thus something that will get widely known, not just an obscure little place in the Internet, or a small regional journal that will be very hard to get in a few years' time, if you actually manage to learn that something of interest was published in there.
And the big names of journals? The ones that get read widely, and have a high impact? Those are often the real pricey ones, where you have a hefty price tag on each single article - even the nonprinted e-version.

So if I get the opportunity to publish an article about the Spinning Experiment in a big, widely-read journal - I take a deep breath, and the opportunity.

Have you published your research for free? How do you feel about that situation, and the question of money flow? Please let me (and your fellow readers) know in the comments - I'd love to hear your opinion!

There is the odour of the season gently wafting through our rooms - smells of baking, of chocolate and nuts and butter. This weekend saw a fair bit of baking - including that of a friend who currently has no kitchen and joined in with his cookie-baking hereabouts, so the oven really did work for its keep. Now we're about finished with the making of all the cookies and goodies for the Xmas coffee table - just two more kinds to go, one of them designed to use up the egg-whites that get left over from other kinds of cookies.

I do the quite-traditional German style baking, where you have one kind of basic cookie dough and turn it into different kinds by adding diverse yumminess enhancers - such as sour (red currant) gelee between two cookies and then coating the top with chocolate. Or doing the same, but with praline (what the Germans call Nougat) instead of the jam. Or adding marzipan to them, stuck onto a single cookie with help of more praline. And then leaving a few ones plain, too - makes four kinds of different cookies from one kneading and baking.

Should you want to join in the baking craze, here's one post with previous recipes, and here is the recipe for the Lemon Thingies.

And because it's almost traditional by now to share a recipe with you at about this time of year, here is one that I took into the canon of things to bake in the season last year: Chocolate-coffee-nut-spheroids. It's one of the "use up your leftover egg whites" recipes - typical German butter cookies call for more egg yolks than whole eggs, so you are saddled with egg whites. I store them into a lock&lock box until I get around to using them; my sister once told me she also freezes them when she has to keep them for a longer while, or when she wants to save them for something larger involving more of the stuff later in the year. I usually base these recipes on 2 egg whites for writing them down, and then prepare double or triple this amount (depending on the number of whites, and the amount of final objects desired).

Chocolate-coffee-nut-spheroids

200 g mixed nuts (I usually go for a little less than a third walnuts, and the rest almonds and hazelnuts in about similar amounts), chopped not too finely
80 g sugar
100 g dark chocolate, molten
2 egg-whites
1/2 teaspoon instant coffee powder

2 drops bitter almond aroma
1 generous pinch of baking soda

Dissolve coffee powder in about 2 teaspoons of water, then add all the other ingredients. (The baking soda is not in there as a leavening agent, but to neutralise the acid in the coffee, which together with the walnuts can taste unpleasant to some folks.) With wet hands, form small spheres (I place a water bowl beside me to re-wet my hands as needed, and make the spheres about 1.5 to 2 cm in diameter).
Bake for 15 mins at 150° C (fan oven). After cooling, place into a tin to store. Or eat them right away. (Maybe not all of them at once, though...)

I love those little thingies. If you are going to bake them, I hope you'll enjoy them too!

Today it's time for me to rejoice - my article about the Spinning Experiment (yes, that one back from 2009) has been published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. Here's the link.

It's not open access, since that requires the author (yes, the author) to pay a stupid amount of money which I can't afford (and even if I did, I would not since I am a strong believer in the Rule, or Yog's Law). I'd much prefer if it were free, or open access, or offered at an affordable price - but as things are, I am very happy to have the article out there, and published in a journal where it will be seen (and hopefully read) by a lot of people.

(If you would like to read the article, you may have access to it from a library computer if the library subscribes to the journal.)

The links have been piling up again, so here you go - a whole stack of them:

An article about the education of upper-class women in the Middle Ages - I found that very interesting.

Diachronic Design is a blog and webpage concentrating on computers in archaeology - there's not too much content yet, but it could be worthwhile to watch.

Pompeii is crumbling (German blog Archaeologik posts links to Italian articles about collapses).

Doug has done the roundup and synopsis of the (many!) answers to his first Blogging Archaeology Carnival, "Why do you blog".

In case you haven't seen the box-turns-something-else yet, here is the link. (I think this is way, way cool. The only question I have in regards to similar folding thingies is - where in hell do you put the mattress? You still have to store that somewhere, right? And it will be... bed-sized. So no actual space-saving takes place.)

The British Library has a medieval manuscripts blog, covering for example the marginalia of the Gorleston Psalter.

A very interesting post on sharing data: Archaeology and Github (over on Powered by Osteons).

And finally, a (German-language) repository and database of old cooking recipes, dated 1646 until the 20th century.

Enjoy!