B
British Library Blogs
britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk · Company blog · on HN since 2013
The British Library's blogs feature its digitised manuscripts, images, maps, and sound archives, with posts by curators.
What HN saysHN commenters link it for medieval manuscript curiosities like the knight versus snail, bestiary elephants, and the million-image Flickr release.
23HN people shared it
6linked it in comments
31stories submitted
795story points
2 years agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Knight v Snail4 people · 5 points · first shared 2013 · 1 comments on HN
- 2British Library has released over a million images onto Flickr Commons2 people · 193 points · first shared 2013 · 57 comments on HN
- 3800 year old Magna Carta manuscript reveals its secrets1 people · 68 points · first shared 2014 · 19 comments on HN
- 4Hidden figure in Leonardo da Vinci notebook revealed1 people · 66 points · first shared 2016 · 6 comments on HN
- 518th century route map from Delhi to Kandahar1 people · 61 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 6An 18th Century North African Travelling Physician's Handbook1 people · 56 points · first shared 2016 · 4 comments on HN
- 7Tipu Sultan’s dream book1 people · 50 points · first shared 2015 · 2 comments on HN
- 8Razmnamah: the Persian Mahabharata1 people · 49 points · first shared 2016 · 1 comments on HN
- 9Codex Sinaiticus: the earliest manuscript of the complete New Testament1 people · 44 points · first shared 2015 · 36 comments on HN
- 10A Dictionary Packed with Stories from Eighteenth-Century Delhi1 people · 42 points · first shared 2016 · 6 comments on HN
- 11Bald's Leechbook Now Online – 10th century Anglo-Saxon medical recipe compendium1 people · 32 points · first shared 2016 · 3 comments on HN
- 12The Life of the Buddha in Thai Manuscript Art1 people · 24 points · first shared 2015 · 2 comments on HN
- 13The Beauty of Palm Leaf Manuscripts1 people · 19 points · first shared 2014 · 3 comments on HN
- 14The British Library’s Collection of Chinese Propaganda Posters: An Overview1 people · 14 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 15Discovering Visigothic Manuscripts at the British Library1 people · 13 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
salty_biscuits · 2024-05-09
You can look at a medieval bestiary to see how people thought animals might look based on descriptions alone. Like these lovely elephants
https://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2012/10/elep…
lstamour · 2021-03-28
See also: https://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/09/knig… and https://blog.digitizedmedievalmanuscripts.org/medieval-killer-bunny/?a…
I’m sure there’s one more relatively recent article I read on this, well-written with a few more pictures, but I’m not finding it in Google right this second.
scholia · 2015-09-10
Interesting... but the million images were released in December 2013.
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digital-scholarship/2013/12/a-mill…
nealabq · 2013-01-30
Related link:
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/archival_sounds/
inglor_cz · 2024-12-17
Cows and other animals have been intentionally bred to become bigger.
If you look at medieval illustrations of shepherds and farmers [0], one thing that strikes you is just how small all the animals are. Even in relation to the medieval humans who were significantly shorter than us.
It had its advantages - for example, a leaner, smaller animal can walk long distances and won't get stuck in swampy ground. But it doesn't give you a lot of anything - hide, meat, milk... Nowadays, we have huge animals, which nevertheless have to be transported by trucks. No longer capable of walking 50 miles from the lowland to the mountains to graze.
[0] https://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/.a/6a00d8341c464853ef01b8d186fbc6…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Medieval_pig…
https://imgcdn.stablediffusionweb.com/2024/11/21/ce988f0d-9e6a-4a5c-84… - note how the cow barely reaches Villon's waist!
acdha · 2015-07-05
This is only partially true: with online storage, it's relatively easy to make bit-for-bit identical copies even if the physical storage medium changes over the years because there's always an overlap period when a technology falls out of favor.
Where it gets expensive is when you neglect to do that and then 50 years from now someone is pulling a Zip disk or LTO tape out of a box and wondering how to read it.
In contrast, analog formats will always lose quality as you copy it so you have a strong incentive to make copies which will last as long as possible. If you get the right material it might be transferable in the future with no work – e.g. high-quality photographic prints on archival-quality stock – or you might end up needing to build exotic equipment which can do things like optically scan records to reconstruct an audio waveform (http://irene.lbl.gov) or deal with media which has disintegrated (https://www.nedcc.org/audio-preservation/irene-blog/2014/08/12/delamin… One look through e.g. http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/collectioncare/index.html should be enough to see limited a time period “no extra work” is valid for.
The common theme for both formats is that it's critical to maintain the ability to read and make copies. Once something falls out of common usage the cost to rebuild that capacity go up dramatically because you're no longer enjoying mainstream economies of scale and the work will increasingly require skilled technicians using bespoke…