Peter Kidd

“GPT-5 is the first time that it feels like talking to an expert in any topic — a Ph.D.-level expert,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said.

At 0:22 one can see what appears to be an H. P. Kraus stock no. in the lower right corner of the inside back cover

I encourage everyone who can afford to, to donate to the Internet Archive / Archive.org.

Well, pre-cyber attack they made it as difficult as possible to download images directly, so I'd be surprised if there's a simple way now!

I've never published BL images precisely because I refuse to pay their fees (except for two articles in the BL journal, for which they provide the images free).

If one part of the website wants £120,000 for something that is available elsewhere on the same website for free, it's arguably even worse that they don't explicitly tell you this!

Typo: £20,000 VAT not £2,000

Still no catalogue of manuscripts, though ...

If you want to download an image from the British Library website for use in a publication with a print-run of 30,000, they want to charge you £100,000 (+£2,000 VAT).
That's £4 per copy. For a single image.
I can't tell if that's for real, or if their new brand website is already broken.

Wonderful; thank you :-)
You are a star!

Anyone who follows me who can read Irish Gaelic: can you identify this, please?

I think it's a poem by Giolla Brighde Ó hEoghusa (aka Maelbrighte / Bonaventura O’Hussey / O'Hosey / Ó Hussey (d. 1614). (The MS also contains his poem for a friend who had fallen into heresy.)

I've sent you a copy by email.

I also recommend G. W. Prothero, <i>A Memoir of Henry Bradshaw: Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and University Librarian</i> (K. Paul, Trench, 1888).

Saw the Bodleian Library's new 'Treasured' exhibition yesterday.

As well as world-class illuminated manuscripts (of course!), there are things like the telegram from the Titanic: "Require assistance; struck iceberg".

But my favourites were the early photos of Victorians posing with their dogs :-)

Please don't post this sort of crap.

I am very glad to have witnessed this wonderful donation this morning -- the Bodleian's weekly Friday Morning Coffee meetings are always of interest, but this was an especially delightful event!

Words to live by.

One last thing, now available on Android devices: you can add items to your Zotero database by taking a photo of the ISBN barcode!

And it has elegant features like automatically converting
189-216
to
189–216
(with an en-dash instead of a hyphen).

I could go on and on about how great it is ...

It also handles titles within titles well, e.g. for

Michael G. Sargent, ‘Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The London Manuscript Group Reconsidered’, Medium Ævum, 52.2 (1983), pp. 189–216.

You can put <i></i> tags around 'Scale of Perfection' (but it won't work here in a Bluesky post)

[...]

One of the best things about it is that it is far better suited to Humanities publications than its competitors. It caters for titles in foreign languages, and know that German should be capitalised differently from Italian, for example.

[...]

Zotero for Android is now available! www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-...

Anyone not already using Zotero on their desktop/laptop to manage bibliographical references should give it a try. I've tried many packages over the decades, but Zotero is by far the best, and is Free and Open Source.

[...]

... but where are the catalogue descriptions?

Five outstanding manuscripts acquired for the nation We are thrilled to announce that the British Library has acquired five medieval manuscripts of outstanding national heritage significance, formerly in the collection of Longleat House. Together, these...

The BL has acquired five medieval manuscripts from Longleat: blogs.bl.uk/digitisedman...

They are digitized with IIIF (e.g. here iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifes...), but I cannot find catalogue descriptions of them; could someone point me in the right direction?

The "CAR-&" pronunciation is also Danish (it was my Danish great-grandmother's name, after whom my sister was named)

Screenshot of the British Library's IIIF interface

And finally, the BL. Expectations are already at rock bottom for what we hope is a temporary implementation. As with the BAV, you can only track folios by keeping the thumbnail pane open. But since they prohibit downloads, because they hate their users, if I want to show you an image, +

Screenshot from the loading page of the new Getty Provenance Index.

Art historians - it looks like the Getty Provenance Index, one of our most indispensable tools, has become almost unusable thanks to a new update. Our best hope is they retain the old version.

www.arthistorynews.com/articles/870...

I have been to most of the OMMG meetings since they started, and they're always interesting. (Including a wonderful one this evening, looking at some of Merton College's finest illuminated MSS). They are friendly, relaxed, informal, gatherings.

I keep telling myself that I'll resume blogging soon. I have a big backlog of topics.

That "may have" in the headline is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting!

"Smith discovered [...] how she even made a submission to MI5.". Making a single submission to MI5 is not the same as "working for" them.

It reads like a completely clickbaity non-story to me.

Welcome!
My advice would be to use separate accounts, as "family" and "medieval" will appeal to different audiences. (Personally, I read everything in my feed, so I unfollow people who post too much that I find irrelevant to my medieval interests. I don't care what their cat looks like today!)

Many of the Western medieval mss have been dispersed, but not all (some will be at Christie's in a few months' time). Or it may have been sold privately. Or donated. I'll ask around when I get back from my current trip to Germany ...