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Date Posted: 12:28:04 10/30/02 Wed
Author: The Darkling
Subject: Re: Something for Beck and Wormie (and the rest of us, too, for that matter!)
In reply to: Lark 's message, "Something for Beck and Wormie (and the rest of us, too, for that matter!)" on 07:52:40 10/30/02 Wed

Oh how cool!

>No One can destory KENNY'S books, now!!
>
> rel=nofollow target=_blank >href="http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/2002/10/30/pag
>e_turner.html"target="blank_">Historic Books
>
>Software makes historic books real page turners
>
>By David Mehegan, Globe Staff, 10/30/2002
>
>We stopped into the Boston Athenaeum last week, sat
>down with the "Sherborne Missal," and began to leaf
>through the pages. You know that book, right? It's an
>early 15th-century illuminated manuscript, with 690
>21-by-14-inch vellum pages of gorgeously painted
>biblical and medieval English scenes. Recently
>acquired by the British Library for $24 million, it's
>rather pleasant to look at it close-up, turning the
>pages by hand.
>
>OK, not the actual book, but something almost as good,
>and equally astonishing in its own way. A delegation
>from the British Library was in town demonstrating a
>new computerized display system called Turning the
>Pages, which allows anyone to "virtually" turn the
>pages of, so far, eight priceless manuscripts. With
>the e-Book, the Bookman, and other would-be successors
>to real books already headed for the dustbin of
>history, leave it to the Brits to think up a
>futuristic system that goes back to where books have
>been for 1,700 years. "It's the closest most of us can
>get to turning the actual pages," says Michelle Brown,
>the British Library's curator of illuminated
>manuscripts.
>
>One sees a digital image of the red-jacketed book on a
>computer screen, transformed with digital animation
>from a digital film of the original. Touch the cover
>with a fingertip and the book opens. Slide the
>fingertip right to left across a right-hand page, and
>it turns over. Let go too soon and the "page" flops
>back. The effect is eerily realistic. The dazzling
>gold paint reflects light from somewhere overhead. The
>page seems to be heavy, and as it moves, its shadow
>precedes it.
>
>Touch any spot on any page, and a close-up enlargement
>appears, with a nearby "magnifying glass" that can be
>moved by fingertip around the page. Touch the audio
>icon, and a narrator tells you what you are looking
>at. On the pages with musical notation, touch an icon
>and a monastic choir breaks into Gregorian chant. The
>birds throughout are real English species; touch an
>icon, and they sing.
>
>The system was developed so that priceless
>manuscripts, normally either locked away in
>climate-controlled vaults or displayed one page at a
>time under subdued light, could be available for
>anyone. The software is owned by the British Library,
>but its hope is that other libraries can use it to
>display their own treasures, at a per-page cost of
>$1,500 to $2,300.
>
>Books on the system so far include the fifth-century
>Buddhist "Diamond Sutra," the world's oldest dated
>printed book; a collection of Leonardo da Vinci's
>drawings known as the "Arundel Codex;" the "Golden
>Haggadah," a 14th-century Hebrew service book from
>Spain; the "Sforza Hours," a 15th-century Italian
>prayer book; and "Blackwell's Herbal," a book about
>medicinal plants. Future books will include Lewis
>Carroll's "Alice's Adventures Under Ground," "William
>Blake's Notebook," and Vesalius's drawings on anatomy.
>
>The full set can be seen on the 37-inch screens at the
>British Library and, in the United States, at the
>National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Md. A sample
>version is available on the British Library's Web
>site: rel=nofollow target=_blank >href="http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/news.html"
>target="blank_">British Library Books
>
>Brown and Clive Izard, the library's creative projects
>manager, have the bubbly enthusiasm of people who have
>just invented the abacus or the pencil — they can't
>wait for people to try it out, as if they are
>disseminating the ancient treasures within. "The
>challenge is to get people from the present into the
>past," Brown says. "Books are the perfect portal."
>
>On a PC without a touch screen, the mouse will replace
>the fingertip, though it's much less fun. Izard
>recalled a demonstration for Queen Elizabeth II. "She
>put her finger down to turn the pages," Izard says,
>"but it didn't work. I had to say to her, `Your
>Majesty, it's your gloves."' For some reason, the bare
>fingers have to make contact. But that too is
>realistic; she probably couldn't turn the real pages
>with gloves on, either. Did he tell her to take them
>off? He didn't, and she didn't.
>
>David Mehegan can be reached at mehegan@globe.com.
>
>:o)

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