Bear Flag Republic Radio Weblog

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"The villa probably belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso, father-in-law of Julius Caesar and one of the rulers of the Roman republic. In AD79, a century after his death, it was buried under 30 metres of volcanic debris by the same Vesuvius eruption that wiped out Pompeii and Herculaneum....

Several of the experts involved in the campaign to save the villa agree there may be lost plays by Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus, or even the lost dialogues of Aristotle, as well as works by many other Greek writers, in the lower level.

A contemporary copy of the Lucretius poem On the Nature of Things - which has been recovered - suggests that the villa may yield copies of Virgil's Aeneid, or copies of Horace, or even Catullus.

And it is possible that a family capable of owning such a villa also possessed a copy of Livy's History of Rome, of which more than 100 of the original 142 books are missing....

In the meantime, the buried villa is threatened, in the short term by flooding, in the long term by renewed volcanic activity. What is needed is money to restart the excavation and sufficient will on the part of the Italian authorities to see the project through." [The Age, via MetaFilter]

Now that's preservation. Insert your own joke here about copyright and/or the obsolescence of digital formats.

comments < 7:56:06 PM        >

There is much to browse through from the Presentation Links from Internet Librarian International 2002, and I'll probably be reading through almost every presentation on this page, but here's a healthy sampling. [via Library News Daily]

• Benchmarking of Library Web Sites by Brian Kelly and Penny Garrod
• Navigation Elements on Library Web Sites: What Works Best? Lesley Moyo (Powerpoint file)
• Weblogs & Blogging: What & Why? by Peter Scott
• New Devices and the Web by Helen Petrie and Brian Kelly
• Adapting to New Technologies: Wireless by Mary Peterson (Powerpoint file)
• Using RFID Technology in the Library by J.F. Malschaert
• Online Learning Courseware: Web Based Technologies by Darlene Fichter and Frank Cervone (Powerpoint file)

I am hoping that the first two links listed above will complement Andrew Pace's Building and Optimizing Library Web Services issue of Library Technology Reports (the current March/April 2002 issue), which I hope to get to this weekend. (Sorry, but it's available by subscription only.)

[The Shifted Librarian]
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Paolo presents: RemoteEdit. Use GoLive, Dreamweaver or Front Page to edit Radio templates. Very cool stuff!  [Scripting News]
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STS-110 countdown begins. The countdown for Thursday's launch of the shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-110 began... [spacetoday.net]
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New hot line links CEOs to White House. Inspired by the breakdown in communication on Sept. 11, the so-called CEO Link will be used to shuttle high-priority news between government officials and executives. [CNET News.com]
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Yahoo service changes baffle customers. Some users of Yahoo's e-mail-forwarding feature are finding themselves booted from the service because they said they would not accept third-party marketing messages. [CNET News.com]
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ATI takes Radeon 8500 to the Mac. 'Invites' trade-in [The Register]
comments < 7:41:53 PM        >

Sharp Ships Linux-Java Handheld. Aimed at both enterprise and consumers [allNetDevices Wireless News]
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