I like online resources for research - who doesn't? And occasionally, I stumble across a new one, which is always a nice thing.

My most recent discovery happened because a colleague was searching for a specific article, published as part of a book, that I thought sounded interesting. So I checked my own library database, but of course it was not in there. Then I did a bit of a search on the 'net, and there was a link to the Internet Archive (which you might know through the WayBackMachine, which I can totally recommend if you want to look at websites that once were but are no more today) and, more specifically, to their lending library thing OpenLibrary.org - where you can virtually borrow digital copies of books. Quite a lot of books, actually, including the one in question that my colleague was looking for.

Borrowing works if you have a free log-in for the Internet Archive, and then you can read for one hour in the book in question, with automatic extension as long as nobody else wants to read it. Some things can also be borrowed to your e-reader for a 14-day period.

So in case you're running out of things to read... you might find something there. I hope you have fun!

To my great delight, I received an author's copy yesterday - "Crafting Textiles" is now out. It's the conference proceedings from a conference in honour of Peter Collingwood that took place some years ago.



It's always really nice to get an author's copy... it somehow feels like a birthday present.

If you're not as lucky as me and want to order the book, you can do so at Oxbow Books or, of course, at the brick-and-mortar bookshop of your choice. (When buying books, by the way, usually most of the money goes to the place where you buy it - so you can decide for yourself whether you want to support the publisher, your bookseller of choice or, in case they sell themselves too, the author.)

There's a picture in my personal image database that has irked me for ages now. It's from a popular science book about the Middle Ages:

Hägermann, Dieter: Das Mittelalter. Die Welt der Bauern, Bürger, Ritter und Mönche. RM Buch und Medien, 2001.

There are plenty of illustrations in that book, and some of them state where they are from (or at least roughly), some of them don't. Of course, I'm talking here about one from the latter category. I've been looking for that image ever since I've seen it in the book, but to no avail - but maybe someone of you has?

Here it is:

[caption id="attachment_6015" align="alignnone" width="412"] From Hägermann, Dieter, p. 154. The description says "Travelling merchants with pack animals. They exchange information. French book illustration, 1448."


This might have been a marginal illustration somewhere, as it has been cut out from the background; some of the marginal images from the Luttrell Psalter have been treated similarly for the book. It might be a cut-out part from a "proper" image, too, though - the style somehow looks not so marginal to me. But then, I'm no expert on illuminations. I'd just really, really like to know where this comes from, so I can cite it properly and learn about the context and maybe see if there's more like it in the same manuscript - because it's one of the rare images where you have a woman merchant/traveller among the group, and I find that wonderful and fascinating.

So. Have you seen these merchants, by chance? Or do you know any similar pictures of travelling merchants that include women? Please let me know!

Update: They have been found. You can read about who did it, and where they are from, here.

Resources! Stuff to read and watch!

I always enjoy stumbling across repositories or book lists where you can download fresh, juicy research. (Admittedly, I do download more than I actually read. I'm trying to get everything sorted into my library database, at least, though I'm eternally not caught up with that. The reason? See above - stumbling across repositories... resulting in a little search-and-download splurge.)

My newest discovery is the DiVA portal. That's short for Digital Vetenskapliga Arkivet, a Scandinavian site where you can search for theses and papers from 49 university and research institutions. It looks like it's very well tagged in English, too - searching for "textiles" and either "history" or "medieval" yields a number of results, some of them in English, most in Swedish. Also nice: you can limit the search results to things with full-text available.

Many of these are student papers, so it's research that you don't get to so easily otherwise - delightful to have the possibility to see these via the portal. And if you don't read Swedish (or Norwegian), most should have an abstract in English. Plus you can look at images in any language.

Definitely in English is the upcoming series of the British Library in their Food Season, where there's a number of online events about different aspects of modern and historical food and food culture. If you're a foodie, it's definitely worth checking out.

I've done a little research work these past days, and I've stumbled across, the title might be a hint, free books!

The University Publisher of Kassel University offers books (dissertations, but other types as well) both as printed volumes and as pdf downloads, the latter being entirely free. You can see the whole programme of the publisher here.

Two books that I came across that may be interesting for you, too, are Presche, Christian: Kassel im Mittelalter and Wolkewitz, Ursula: Die gravierten Messinggrabplatten des 13. und 14.Jahrhunderts im Bereich der norddeutschen Hanse - ihre Herkunft und ihre Bedeutung.

There might be more, but unfortunately there is no good search function for the catalogue, and I have not had the time (nor the inclination or patience) to click my way through the long list. In case you find something interesting, too, please let the rest of us know in the comments!

In case you're looking for (research-y) summer reading stuff, you might want to check out JSTOR, who have expanded their free reading scheme from six to one hundred articles per month, to support researchers during the COVID-19 crisis. This is very nice, and very generous!

You need to register with them for access (which is free), and then you can read up to 100 paywalled articles; there is also a number of open-access articles on their page.

Happy reading!

I've recently mentioned the Open Access books available at OApen.org - and I've found now that the books available include Karina Grömer's book about prehistoric textiles, both in the German and the English version. You can find them here - enjoy!