Ok, shame on me – Amy from the Folger Shakespeare Library sends me a press release almost 2 weeks ago, and I go and completely forget to post the thing!  I’m horrible. I imagine a day when e-book technology comes together with such digitizing of classic works, and I can quite literally have the entire Folger library at my fingertips. ——————————
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE      PRESS CONTACTS 
January 16, 2009      Garland Scott, (202) 675-0342, gscott@folger.edu

Amy Arden, (202) 675-0326, aarden@folger.edu

Folger Shakespeare Library Expands Access to Digital Collection Washington, DC – The Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare materials, is expanding access to its digital collection by offering free online access to over 20,000 images from the library’s holdings. The digital image collection includes books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, art, and 218 of the Folger’s pre-1640 quarto editions of the works of William Shakespeare. Users can now examine these collection items in detail while accessing the Folger’s rare materials from desktops anywhere in the world. “Digital initiatives are an important and ongoing part of our mission to provide access to the Folger collection,” said Gail Kern Paster, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library. “Cherishing the past has never been in conflict with embracing the future. The promise of digitization is one more powerful case in point. We now have opportunities to bring the Folger’s extraordinary collection to more users than ever.” Julie Ainsworth, the Folger’s Head of Photography and Digital Imaging, said, “We began digitizing the collection in 1995. By making the collection available online, we are giving researchers and the public an important tool.” The Folger’s digital image collection provides resources for users to view multiple images side by side, save their search results, create permanent links to images, and perform other tasks through a free software program, Luna Insight. Stephen Enniss, Eric Weinmann Librarian at the Folger said that “These features will create more ways for researchers, students, and teachers to experience the collection. They can share images with each other, generate online galleries, and examine items from Queen Elizabeth’s letters to costume sketches. As a library we’re continually seeking ways to expand access for researchers and students across the country and around the world.” The Folger is also collaborating with the University of Oxford to digitize 75 quarto editions of Shakespeare’s plays and create the Shakespeare Quartos Archive, which will provide free online access to interactive, high-resolution images of the plays. The Shakespeare Quartos Archive is funded by a new Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grant awarded jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joint Information Systems Committee. In addition, Picturing Shakespeare will make 100,000 images from the Folger collection – including prints, unique drawings, and photography relating to Shakespeare – available to teachers, scholars, and the general public in 2010 through an initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Both projects join a fast-growing body of podcasts, videos, and other online content produced by the library. * * * * * Folger Shakespeare Library is a world-class center for scholarship, learning, culture, and the arts. It is home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection and a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period (1500–1750). Folger Shakespeare Library is an internationally recognized research library offering advanced scholarly programs in the humanities; an innovator in the preservation of rare materials; a national leader in how Shakespeare is taught in grades K–12; and an award-winning producer of cultural and arts programs – theater, music, poetry, exhibits, lectures, and family programs. By promoting understanding of Shakespeare and his world, Folger Shakespeare Library reminds us of the enduring influence of his works, the formative effects of the Renaissance on our own time, and the power of the written and spoken word. A gift to the American people from industrialist Henry Clay Folger, the Folger Shakespeare Library – located one block east of the U.S. Capitol – opened in 1932. Learn more at www.folger.edu. # # #

http://sparknotes.com/home/shakespeare/article/william_shakespeare_was_tinkerbells_dad.html Or so begins the article, followed up in the first line by a “No, not really.”  (Bait and switch, much?) It then goes on to give a history of fairies (“faeries”) at the time of Shakespeare, and how he didn’t even invent them, he just gave us some of our modern ideas about how they behave. Hmmm….sounds familiar somehow….. http://blog.shakespearegeek.com/2008/07/scary-fairies.html

http://www.clicknotes.com/hamlet/questions.html Remember AC Bradley?  I remember back in high school hearing that name associated with the definition of tragic hero.  So when his name showed up in my links today in the title “A.C. Bradley Answers Your Hamlet Questions”, I was intrigued. The linked page is….well, interesting.  It’s a bullet list, maybe a dozen questions about Hamlet, all of which are given straight up yes or no answers, with a link to Bradley.  Did Gertrude sleep with Claudius before Hamlet’s father died?  Yes, see page 166.   Did Hamlet delay because of moral conscience or scruple?  No, he delayed because of profound melancholy, pages 97+108. While I’m sure this has value (the linked pages do in fact give detail on how each answer is chosen), I hate it.  A quick skim makes the reader think there are definite answers to these questions just because some expert says so.  But then if you try to read the justifications, you yourself have to be an expert in the subject just to understand what the heck Bradley is talking about.

Hey everybody, don’t forget about the current book giveaway : Harper Collins is offering free copies of Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare autobiography to 3 readers *and their friends*!  That’s the gimmick – just comment on that post telling us who you’d give the extra copy to, and why. For bonus points, introduce a friend to ShakespeareGeek.com and get them to comment, too – you’ll get extra entries in the contest! Contest ends January 31.  Let’s make this the biggest giveaway yet!  Don’t forget, publishers like exposure for their titles, so the more entries I get, the better the odds they’ll come back and give me more free stuff next time.  Help a geek out!

No, I’m not talking about Mr. Obama and Martin Luther King, I’m talking about hearing my 2.5yr old son quote Shakespeare :). As regular readers are bored of hearing, my 4 and 6 yr old girls are both familiar with “Shall I Compare Three” as a bedtime lullaby, and have been since they were 3 and 5. Now I can almost but not quite add the boy to my growing army of geeklets:  check it out .  He still needs a little coaxing, but give him time, the boy isn’t out of diapers yet. 🙂