Author Archives: johnl

Gorilla in the Roses: The Collages of Halliwell and Orton

Posted on February 21, 2012 by johnl

“On the frontispiece a picture of a monkey’s head had been pasted in the middle of a rose.” “On the front, where there should be pictures of eminent persons, there are the faces of cats and a bird has been … Continue reading →

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Installing Zotero standalone on Ubuntu 11.10

Posted on November 14, 2011 by johnl

Zotero is an open source reference manager, produced by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.  To say ‘reference manager’ understates what it is capable of: you can use it to organize your reading, collaborate with others, and … Continue reading →

Posted in geekery | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

Locating London’s Pasts

Posted on October 27, 2011 by johnl

Last week I attended a seminar on the latest venture from Sheffield and Hertfordshire Universities’ family of digital history projects, Locating London’s Past. The aim is to create a sort of geographical front end to a number of London-centred datasets, … Continue reading →

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Making the TCP-ECCO texts accessible

Posted on August 12, 2011 by johnl

In April, the Text Creation Partnership released into the public domain over 2,000 eighteenth century works,  in plain text. You can read more about this project and the texts on their blog: TCP Releases Over 4,000 New EEBO-TCP Texts What the … Continue reading →

Posted in commons, digital history | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Economics of JSTOR

Posted on July 21, 2011 by johnl

Aaron Swartz was arrested a few days ago for the unauthorized bulk downloading of files from JSTOR, the academic journal archive. According to the indictment [pdf] , he faces up to 35 years in prison and a fine of up … Continue reading →

Posted in edubiz | Tagged , | 12 Comments

The Clerkenwell House of Detention

Posted on May 28, 2011 by johnl

The recent Clerkenwell Design Week offered a rare chance to visit the vaults of the Clerkenwell House Of Detention, opened up to host an exhibition. These cellars are all that remain of the 1847 prison, demolished at the end of … Continue reading →

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What I Learned From ‘Luddites without condescension’

Posted on May 16, 2011 by johnl

A couple of Fridays ago (6th May 2011) I attended the Luddites Without Condescension event at Birkbeck. What I took away: 1: The Luddites are politically charged. The word is commonly used today as a slur to anyone questioning modern … Continue reading →

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Mapping Petersburg

Posted on April 7, 2011 by johnl

After months of work, Mapping Petersburg is now live! Built in collaboration with Dr Sarah J. Young, it is a pilot for a much larger project taking in two centuries of the Petersburg text. The aim is not only to … Continue reading →

Posted in digital humanities, My Projects | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Digital Humanities GIS projects

Posted on March 16, 2011 by johnl

Being involved in a number of projects with a spatial dimension, I’ve been teaching myself digital cartography for over a year. The code, however, is only half the story. Maps are not transparent depictions of reality, there are many problems, … Continue reading →

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Luddite Bicentenary and Luddite Song

Posted on March 11, 2011 by johnl

Alerted today that this year – and the next two – is the bicentenary of the great Luddite movement. Still much maligned as backwards-looking, anti-progressive, and if I may be permitted an anarchronism, ‘technophobic’, it is important to remember these … Continue reading →

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