Ning Diary: Jan. 4 - Posthius Aesop DONE!

[Laura Gibbs]

Quite a while ago, there was a post in the AMAZING BibliOdyssey blog about Baroque fables, and through the generous help of the author of that blog, I learned about the treasure trove of digital texts at the Munich Library. In particular, I learned about an unusual Aesop published in 1566 with illustrations and Latin tetrastichs expressing the morals of the fables. Well, months and months have gone by - and I figured that if I did not work on it now, it would not get done before summer... so, as my last totally fun task before going back to work on Monday, I digitized the Posthius Aesop. And what fun it was!!! I only did the Latin verses and the images; anyone who is interested in seeing the entire work can download a PDF from the Munich Library for their own perusal (the Munich digitization project is simply breathtaking - I used their materials for my Abstemius project last summer, too).

Anyway, for those of you interested in technical details, here is what I did:
1) Downloaded the PDF.
2) Copied the images with the verse text page by page, and uploaded them to my bestmoodle.net website (where I do most of my image hosting).
3) I quickly built 181 pages at my Aesopus wiki to display the images.
4) Looking at the images, I digitized the Latin text (have not proofread yet).
5) Based on the digitization, I then prepared a table of contents page.

And here is the result:

AESOP, by POSTHIUS

There is still lots more work to do here, but it is a great start, and I am so glad I got this much done before going back to work on Monday. So much Aesop, so little time, ha ha.

If only I didn't have to go back to work already... SIGH.

:-)