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“Which single-serving Tumblr blogs are your favorite to follow? The better ones leave as fast as they come. So this answer might date the interview, but right now I like Screenshots of Despair a lot.”

— Tumblr lead designer Peter Vidani, The Verge, June 25, 2012 (via screenshotsofdespair)

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got a book about computers from 2000 for my birthday

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If everyone believes that we can make a better world then maybe 1994 will be a utopia for everyone. ↯93NOV

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Sources for Research on English Linguistics, Literature, and Culture

-> links to databases, archives, corpora, encyclopedias, and more

The following sites are for English studies, linguistics, and anglistics. 

I could also do another list like this one for other related studies, such as classic philology, German studies, Scandinavian studies, Romance studies, and Slavic studies, in case that’s something you guys are interested in. 

All of these sites should allow free access for everyone. Most of them are from Great Britain, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia/New Zealand, and Germany. 

(Please let me know, if any of the links don’t work)

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Collections / Databases / Archives / Anthologies: 

About the USA (information about the US, including holidays, history, society, art and entertainment, media, government, politics, travel, sports, economy, and science)

African American Women Writers of the 19th Century (database of 50 works by African American women of the 19th century)

American Memory (digitalised material from the Americana collection of the Library of Congress)

American Song Sheets (collection of 1,800 song sheets from the 19th century)

American Verse Project (archive with American poetry until 1920)

Archive of Early American Images (7,000 images about North and South America from primary sources between 1492 and 1895)

Arthurian Fiction in Medieval Europe (information about the Arthurian tale and the scripts which spread it around Europe)

Atlas of Surveillance (records surveillance technologies used by US law enforcement agencies, including drones, body cameras, face recognition, etc.)

Australian Poetry Library (over 42,000 poems by over 170 Australian authors)

Bartleby.com (texts of (English-speaking) world literature with reference material; over 370,000 sites)

Bibliography of the International Arthurian Society (literature about the Arthurian tale)

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads (over 30,000 ballads from the 16th to the 20th century)

Bodleian Library Pre-1920 allegro Catalogue (printed matter in European languages and writings published before 1920 or purchased before 1989 by the Bodleian Library) 

BookPage: Issue Archive (monthly information about new books and book reviews)

British Cartoon Archive (over 200,000 cartoons from comic books, newspapers, magazines, and books about British history)

British Fiction 1800-1829 (2,272 texts by about 900 authors of the early 19th century)

British Library Online Gallery: Virtual Books (virtual access to rare / old books of the British Library)

British National Bibliography (bibliography of books and periodicals of the British Library)

Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online (database about the life and works of Ben Jonson, a well-known Renaissance writer)

Cambridge History of English and American Literature (online version of the books)

Canadian Literature Archive (texts by Canadian authors)

Canadiana Online (over 200,000 texts of historical publications)

Casgliad y Werin Cymru = Peoples Collection Wales (document collection by 9 Welsh museums and libraries)

Collect Britain (over 90,000 images, photos, maps, and audio material from the British Library)

Contemporary Writers in the UK (biographical information about the most important contemporary authors of Britain and the Commonwealth)

Digital Collections / Harry Ransom Center (access to over 7,000 objects from literature, photography, film, and art, including manuscripts, letters, posters, photos, and drawings since the 16th century)

Digital Comic Museum (access to Public Domain Comics from the ‘Golden Age of Comicbooks’)

Documenting the American South (14 collections of primary sources about history and culture of the Southern States)

DraCor (collection of dramas in several languages published between 472 BC and 1947) 

Early Americas Digital Archive (historical texts in regard to America, published between 1492 and the 19th century)

Early Modern Festival Books Database (over 3,000 texts about festival culture, published between 1200 and 1800 in 12 languages)

Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (interactive database about the morphosyntactic variation in spoken English)

English Broadside Ballad Archive (English ballads of early modern times with transcriptions of the texts and sometimes recordings of the music)

English Poetry Anthologies (English poems from 1250 to 1943)

English-Corpora.org (collection of English corpora)

Environmental History of the Americas Database (2,000 international texts about the environmental history of North and South America)

European Views of the Americas (32,000 European printed texts about America until 1750)

Familiar Quotations (online edition, includes 11,000 quotes of English literary history)

Fontes Anglo-Saxonici (all sources in English or Latin texts from Anglo-Saxon England (until 1066) or Anglo-Saxon authors)

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS, 1861-1993) (official documentation of foreign-policy decisions of the USA)

Gender Inn (database with more than 8,400 texts about feminist theory and gender studies)

Grand Comics Database (database of all comics about North America published world-wide)

Hamnet : Folger Library Catalogue (online catalogue of the Folger Shakespeare Library)

HANSARD 1803-2005 (British parliamentary sessions from 1803 to 2005)

Hartlib Papers (database with all the letters of Samuel Hartlib)

Heroic in Victorian Periodicals (analyses the motive of heroism in Victorian Great Britain)

Historical Thesaurus of English (800,000 words from Old to Modern English with meanings, synonyms, etc.)

IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana (sheet music from the Indiana University Lilly Library, the Indiana State Library, the Indiana State Museum, and the Indiana Historical Society)

Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections (index of 3,900 anthologies from before 1984)

Internet Shakespeare Editions (database about the life and works of Shakespeare)

Internet Speculative Fiction Database (database of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Literature)

IntraText Digital Library (texts about religion, philosophy, literature, and history in 39 languages)

ipl2: Information You Can Trust (catalogue of examined, evaluated, and commentated links to American websites)

Japan Science and Technology Information Aggregator (2,000 peer reviewed journals about Japanese research in science, technology, and medicine)

John Johnson Collection (one of the largest collections of printed documents from British history)

Johnsons Dictionary Online (web version of Samuel Johnson’s ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ (1755))

Joyce Papers 2002 (digitalised collection of the National Library of Ireland in Dublin)

Language in Australia and New Zealand (bibliography of 6,200 titles about Australian and New Zealand languages and language families)

Lecturing Women in Victorian Periodicals Database (Feminist lectures in Victorian England (14 periodicals))

Library of Anglo-American Culture & History 

Location Register of English Literary Manuscripts and Letters (locations of English literature from the 18th century to today in Great Britain and Ireland)

Luminarium (English literature and history from the Middle Ages to the 18th century)

Making of America (primary sources of American history from 1859 to 1877 and secondary literature from 1840 to 1900)

Melville Electronic Library (online editions of the works of Hermann Melville)

Middle English Collection (database of 60 works and collections of works of Middle English literature)

MIT Global Shakespeares Video & Performance Archive (online access to Shakespeare performances from around the world)

MLA Language Map (map of the linguistic characteristics of different regions of the USA)

Modernist Journals Project (database of texts about modernism from 1890 to 1922)

New Face of Fiction (modern fiction of Canadian authors from Random House Canada)

OLC Anglistik - Online Contents (articles about anglistics / English studies)

Oxford Journals (by the Oxford University Press; collection of journals)

Oxford Languages (collection of language dictionaries)

Papakilo Database (database about history and culture of Hawaii)

Papers of Abraham Lincoln (database with handwritten papers and documents by Abraham Lincoln)

Pascal / Francis (database of journals and conference proceedings)

PEN America Digital Archive (archive of audio and video materials since 1966)

Perseus Digital Library / Renaissance Materials (collection of 80 texts of English Renaissance literature)

Piers Plowman Electronic Archive (corpus of all manuscripts of the poem ‘Piers Plowman’)

Polish Diaspora in the UK and Ireland (databank on how Polish immigrants influenced British literature and culture)

Popular History in Victorian Magazines Database (database of how popular history was presented in Victorian magazines)

Project Gutenberg (53,000 free ebooks and other texts)

Questia (5,000 free books)

REED Online (database of early English dramas from the Middle Ages to 1642)

Shapell Collection (collection of media about the history of the US in the 19th and 20th century)

SSSL Bibliography: A Checklist of Scholarship on Southern Literature (secondary literature of more than 1,000 authors from the US south)

Swedish American Newspapers / Svensk-Amerikanska Tidningar (database of 300,000 newspaper pages from 28 different daily newspapers published in the US from 1859 to 2007)

TEAMS Middle English texts (online editions of Middle English texts with annotations and bibliographies)

Trove / National Library of Australia (search engine for media relating to Australia)

Vetusta Monumenta : Ancient Monuments, a Digital Edition (digital edition of ‘Vetusta Monumenta’ from 1718 to 1796 with scans of copperplate engravings and scientific commentary)

Victorian Dictionary (sources about life in Victorian London)

Vision of Britain Through Time (historic-geographic information about Great Britain)

Walt Whitman Manuscripts (archive of the manuscripts of Walt Whitman)

Welsh Journals Online (archive of 50 Welsh journals/magazines)

Wright American Fiction (digital library of American novels of the 19th century (1851 und 1875))

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Language Corpora:

British National Corpus (100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English from the later part of the 20th century)

corpora.unito (linguistic corpora for Italian, French, Spanish, English, and German)

Corpus of Early English Correspondence

Corpus of Electronic Texts (database with texts of Irish literature and literary history in Irish, English, Hiberno-Norman, and Latin)

Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse

Middle English Grammar Corpus (corpus of Middle English texts)

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Dictionaries / Encyclopedias: 

Cambridge Dictionaries Online

Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia

Dictionary of Irish Biography (contains about 11,000 articles)

Dictionary of the Scots Language

EDD Online 3.0 (based on Joseph Wright’s ‘English Dialect Dictionary’, 1898-1905)

Encyclopaedia Britannica (general encyclopedia with over 90,000 editorally reviewed articles by 4,300 authors)

Encyclopedia of American Studies (800 texts about US history, politics, culture, society, and economy from precolonial times until now)

Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe (records the cultural movements and their influence on cultural communities in Europe in the wake of the Romantic period)

Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (16,350 entries about Science Fiction authors, artists, and filmmakers, as well as entries about films, radio and TV productions, periodicals, and other publications)

Glottopedia (free editable encyclopedia by linguists for linguists)

Green’s Dictionary of Slang (dictionary by Jonathon Green)

Irish Dictionary Online (English - Irish dictionary)

Linguee (translation database by DeepL for word contexts) 

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online (monolingual English dictionary)

Macmillan Dictionary (monolingual English dictionary)

Merriam-Webster (dictionary and thesaurus)

Oxford Learners Dictionary

Thesaurus of Old English (Old English (Anglo-Saxon) dictionary)

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Typography Tuesday

Last week we highlighted a typographic display of David Bethel’s Glint type ornaments arranged and letterpress printed by the Milwaukee-born letterpress printer Michael Tarachow at his Pentagram Press. This week we present a selection of handset type displays by Tarachow from his 1988 book The Pentagram Press Commonplace Book, printed in an edition of 176 copies signed by the printer. This was his Tarachow’s first book printed in Minneapolis after moving there from Markesan, Wisconsin. He subtitles the book A Selection of Typographic Interpretations and states that it “required 112 press runs (time is the invisible factor!) on Arches Wove, which amounts to nearly 28,000 impressions.”

With the exception of George Bernard Shaw, the quotes are by type designers and letterpress printers: Leonard F. Bahr, Rudolf Koch, Eric Gill, Philip Gallo, Bruce Rogers, Wisconsin letterpress printer and outdoorsman David Brosshard, and Tarachow’s spouse and printing partner Merce Dostale. Click on the images to view the types used.

View other posts with work by the Pentagram Press.

View more Typography Tuesday posts.

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LJS 300 is a manuscript copy of the Calendarium and Ephemerides as published by Regiomontanus in 1474. The Calendarium, for 1475-1530, gives information on lunar and solar eclipses, the length of days, and the signs of the zodiac and planets. Online: bit.ly/3yA0val

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Decorative Sunday

This Sunday we feature woodcuts, photogravure, and specimens from legendary American papermaker Dard Hunter’s A Papermaking Pilgrimage to Japan, Korea and China, published in 1936 in New York by Pynson Printers in a limited edition of 350. Each edition is signed by Hunter and the founder of Pynson Printers, typographer and book designer Elmer Adler. The woodcuts were cut by J. J. Lankes and the photogravure plates were printed by Photogravure & Color Co. of New York. The book was bound by master binder Gerhard Gerlach, a student of lauded German bookbinder Ignatz Wiemeler. The book includes original specimens collected by Hunter.

The first photogravure above (image #2), the frontispience for the book, is a kakemono by an unknown Japanese artist memorializing “Three Gods of Papermaking.” Depicted are Cai Lun, traditionally attributed as the Chinese inventor of paper in the early second century and Damjing (Donchō in Japan), the Korean Buddhist monk that is often credited with introducing paper to Japan in 610. They are shown alongside Seibei Mochizuki, who in 1572 brought papermaking to Nishijima, a mountainous region of Yamanashi Prefecture.

This book is the generous gift of the trusts of Hazel O. Metzner and Delia G. Ovitz, local sisters who worked as Librarians at UWM’s predecessor institution, the Milwaukee State Normal School. 

You can read more about Dard Hunter in this Typography Tuesday post.

See more wood engravings by J. J. Lankes.

Find more Decorative Sunday posts here. 

-Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Intern

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Fabienne Levy Gallery

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Studio Jimbo

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I don't think Reddit gets enough credit for how hilariously buckwild the subreddit system is.

Like it makes sense on the surface. The subreddits are all topic-focused independent message boards, each with their own moderator teams, and you can curate which ones show up on your feed. Subscribe to the ones that suit your interests and bam you're good.

Except the question of WHO is in charge of every subreddit is an objectively hilarious system. Anyone can create a subreddit. Under any name. Who holds the keys to the kingdom is strictly determined by whoever managed to camp the name first. It's like tumblr URL wars except if whoever managed to grab the URL "homestuck" got to be defacto in charge of the entire homestuck fandom.

Or at least they get to be in charge until they anger the populace and get ousted, Julius Caesar style, by the team of fellow moderators they brought aboard, or until they voluntarily sign the deed over because they don't want to deal with 600,000 angry homestuck fans every single day, or they get mutinied against and all the REAL homestuck fans flock over to "curatedhomestuck" or "homestuckcirclejerk" or "homestuckcirclejerkcirclejerk".

You get seemingly benign subreddits about things like baking or kittens that have absolutely batshit rules because the whole thing is being run by a paranoid and power-hungry 23-year-old from Arkansas. You get inter-subreddit beef where the mods of r/cutekittensdoingcutethings will ban you from their subreddit because you have a history of posting in r/genshinimpact. You get subreddits that fall to ruin and spam because the moderators in charge vanished into the night without passing power along to anyone else.

Redditors love to complain about Reddit moderators and this surprises me not at all because there is simply no possible way that the Reddit moderation system could be a smooth-running machine when its defining underlying mechanic is First Come First Serve. And that's hilarious to me. That's hilarious. Political system where the King is chosen from among the populace of people who comment "first" on Youtube videos. You can't beat that.

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Banking in the year 2000, as depicted in 1970

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ON THIS DAY: Producer George Pal’s space adventure Destination Moon rocketed into theaters on June 27, 1950.

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Collection of sci-fi covers by Karel Thole for the Italian magazine Urania

Thole takes over at issue #233

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Amazing mirror trick photography from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Read more here…

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Emil Engel Andersson