scholarly journals Reading Þórðar saga kakala as literature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. White
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Original Version ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Great Scholar ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
Intertextual Connections

Þórðar saga kakala is a thirteenth-century contemporary saga, extant today in the surviving manuscripts of the fourteenth-century compilation Sturlunga saga. The original version of the saga – *Þórðar saga kakala hin mikla – was written during in Western Iceland during the 1270s, most probably by someone close to Hrafn Oddsson who had been present at the saga’s events (notably proposed to be Svarthöfði Dufgusson) (White 2020a). In extant form, Þórðar saga kakala contains 50 chapters covering the years 1242-9/50 and 1254-6; however, *Þórðar saga kakala hin mikla was longer and, whilst also ending in 1256, likely began in c.1233 (or even earlier in c.1210) (White 2020a). Historically, contemporary sagas – such as the component texts of Sturlunga saga – have been treated uncritically by scholars seeking to cite them as primary sources of Icelandic history. Despite this, in recent years attitudes have begun to change (cf. Jón Viðar Sigurðsson et al. 2017). The transformation in approaches to the contemporary sagas has been spearheaded by the great scholar of Sturlunga saga, Úlfar Bragason, who has sought throughout his career to evaluate the literary qualities of the compilation, especially from a narratological standpoint (e.g. Úlfar Bragason 2010). This article carries out a literary analysis of Þórðar saga kakala, specifically in relation to how its structure and intertextual connections serve as meaning-making devices. Two arguments are presented across this article. The first is that Þórðar saga kakala’s interlaced structure encourages the reader to focus in on Þórður’s personal qualities. The second is that Þórðar saga kakala’s implicit references to other texts serves to induce the reader to attribute Þórður’s successes to his possession of exceptional characteristics. The article closes by emphasising the literary nature of this apparently historical text, and echoes Úlfar’s call for historians to use subject the text to thoroughgoing analysis when using it as a primary source.

Using Sources In History Teaching

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-67
Author(s):  
Seema S.Ojha
Keyword(s):  
Deductive Reasoning ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Teaching History ◽  
The World ◽  
Source Materials

History is constructed by people who study the past. It is created through working on both primary and secondary sources that historians use to learn about people, events, and everyday life in the past. Just like detectives, historians look at clues, sift through evidence, and make their own interpretations. Historical knowledge is, therefore, the outcome of a process of enquiry. During last century, the teaching of history has changed considerably. The use of sources, viz. textual, visual, and oral, in school classrooms in many parts of the world has already become an essential part of teaching history. However, in India, it is only a recent phenomenon. Introducing students to primary sources and making them a regular part of classroom lessons help students develop critical thinking and deductive reasoning skills. These will be useful throughout their lives. This paper highlights the benefits of using primary source materials in a history classroom and provides the teacher, with practical suggestions and examples of how to do this.

scholarly journals Summer schools in library service at Aberystwyth (1917-1928)

2015 ◽  
Vol 64 (6/7) ◽  
pp. 489-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Mathias
Keyword(s):  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Library Service ◽  
National Library ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The People ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
Summer Schools ◽  
The University

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the courses in library service jointly developed and run by the University and the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, between 1917 and 1928. Design/methodology/approach – An historical approach is adopted and use has been made of relevant extant primary sources held in the National Library, as well as various notices and reports of the courses published in the journals of the time. Findings – Strong similarities between the Summer Schools in Library Service of 100 years ago and the degree programmes currently offered via distance learning by the Department of Information Studies have been indicated. Research limitations/implications – Due to the nature of the research and the reliance on the survival of primary source material, it has not been possible to trace a complete set of Directors’ Reports, which would have offered greater insight into the content of the later Summer Schools as well as the people who attended these courses. Originality/value – The year 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the College of Librarianship Wales, (which has evolved into the Department of Information Studies at Aberystwyth University). However, the roots of this educational establishment can be traced back nearly 50 years earlier to the University’s Summer Schools in library service. This is a largely unexplored subject but represents the first step towards the establishment of the current Department of Information Studies.

scholarly journals Rijeka and its surroundings in 1918-1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-133
Author(s):  
Robert Doričić ◽  
Toni Buterin ◽  
Igor Eterović ◽  
Amir Muzur
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Death Certificates ◽  
World War ◽  
City Center ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
Specific Mortality ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
The City

The Spanish flu, one of the worst epidemics in history, appeared in 1918, on the eve of the end of the World War I. The characteristic of the epidemic on the territory of the city of Rijeka has been poorly studied. Certainly, the lack of primary sources, such as hospital registries, have made the understanding of the incidence and the course of the epidemic in the city more difficult. Therefore, the death certificates have emerged as the main primary source. The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe mortality caused by the (Spanish) flu during 1918 and at the beginning of 1919, using the death registers of those who lived in the area of the city center and the surrounding parishes. The results of the Spanish flu mortality research in the area of Rijeka are compared to the Spanish flu specific mortality on the territory of the three parishes situated in the wider area of Rijeka – Brseč, Mošćenice and Lovran. The elucidation of the characteristics of the Spanish flu epidemic and its impact on the quotidian life in the city of Rijeka is possible through the analysis of daily newspapers as well. In this paper, we have explored such articles in the La Bilancia, Rijeka’s newspaper published in Italian.

The Illusion of Consensus: A Failure to Distinguish Between True and False Consensus

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (8) ◽  
pp. 1195-1204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami R. Yousif ◽  
Rosie Aboody ◽  
Frank C. Keil
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
False Consensus ◽  
Powerful Means ◽  
Different Sources

When evaluating information, we cannot always rely on what has been presented as truth: Different sources might disagree with each other, and sometimes there may be no underlying truth. Accordingly, we must use other cues to evaluate information—perhaps the most salient of which is consensus. But what counts as consensus? Do we attend only to surface-level indications of consensus, or do we also probe deeper and consider why sources agree? Four experiments demonstrated that individuals evaluate consensus only superficially: Participants were equally confident in conclusions drawn from a true consensus (derived from independent primary sources) and a false consensus (derived from only one primary source). This phenomenon was robust, occurring even immediately after participants explicitly stated that a true consensus was more believable than a false consensus. This illusion of consensus reveals a powerful means by which misinformation may spread.

Typomorphic gold features as criteria of placer association with primary gold-silver-type sources (example from Mnogovershinnoye ore placer cluster)

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-23
Author(s):  
Igor Migachev ◽  
Olga Minina ◽  
Vadim Zvezdov
Keyword(s):  
Crystal Morphology ◽  
Gold Cluster ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Trace Element Composition ◽  
Element Composition ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Icp Ms ◽  
Gold Silver ◽  
Comprehensive Study

A comprehensive study of native gold from Mnogovershinnoye gold cluster ores and placers (granulometry, crystal morphology, internal structure, nature of exogenetic transformations, fineness and trace element composition) was performed to define placer association with primary sources. Using ICP-MS method and X-ray spectrographic analysis, new data on geochemical gold features was obtained, which expands and clarifies the evidence of gold typomorphism from a gold-silver deposit primary source and its association with placers.

Cookbooks as Historical Documents

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Albala
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
World View ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Secondary Source ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ethnicity And Race

Historians use cookbooks as primary source documents in much the same way they use any written record of the past. A primary source is a text written by someone in the past, rather than a secondary source which is commentary by a historian upon the primary sources. As with any document, the historian must attempt to answer five basic questions of provenance and purpose if possible. Who wrote the cookbook? What was the intended audience? Where was it produced and when? Why was it written? There are ways the historian can read between the lines of the recipes, so to speak to answer questions that are not directly related to cooking or material culture but may deal with gender roles, issues of class, ethnicity and race. Even topics such as politics, religion and world view are revealed in the commentary found in cookbooks and sometimes embedded in what appears to be a simple recipe. The most valuable of cookbooks and related culinary texts also reveal what we might call complete food ideologies.

scholarly journals Determination of primary combustion source organic carbon-to-elemental carbon (OC / EC) ratio using ambient OC and EC measurements: secondary OC-EC correlation minimization method

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 5453-5465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheng Wu ◽  
Jian Zhen Yu
Keyword(s):  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Measurement Uncertainty ◽  
Elemental Carbon ◽  
Simulated Data ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Pseudorandom Number Generator ◽  
Combustion Source ◽  
Minimization Method ◽  
Soc Estimation

Abstract. Elemental carbon (EC) has been widely used as a tracer to track the portion of co-emitted primary organic carbon (OC) and, by extension, to estimate secondary OC (SOC) from ambient observations of EC and OC. Key to this EC tracer method is to determine an appropriate OC / EC ratio that represents primary combustion emission sources (i.e., (OC / EC)pri) at the observation site. The conventional approaches include regressing OC against EC within a fixed percentile of the lowest (OC / EC) ratio data (usually 5–20 %) or relying on a subset of sampling days with low photochemical activity and dominated by local emissions. The drawback of these approaches is rooted in its empirical nature, i.e., a lack of clear quantitative criteria in the selection of data subsets for the (OC / EC)pri determination. We examine here a method that derives (OC / EC)pri through calculating a hypothetical set of (OC / EC)pri and SOC followed by seeking the minimum of the coefficient of correlation (R2) between SOC and EC. The hypothetical (OC / EC)pri that generates the minimum R2(SOC,EC) then represents the actual (OC / EC)pri ratio if variations of EC and SOC are independent and (OC / EC)pri is relatively constant in the study period. This Minimum R Squared (MRS) method has a clear quantitative criterion for the (OC / EC)pri calculation. This work uses numerically simulated data to evaluate the accuracy of SOC estimation by the MRS method and to compare with two commonly used methods: minimum OC / EC (OC / ECmin) and OC / EC percentile (OC / EC10 %). Log-normally distributed EC and OC concentrations with known proportion of SOC are numerically produced through a pseudorandom number generator. Three scenarios are considered, including a single primary source, two independent primary sources, and two correlated primary sources. The MRS method consistently yields the most accurate SOC estimation. Unbiased SOC estimation by OC / ECmin and OC / EC10 % only occurs when the left tail of OC / EC distribution is aligned with the peak of the (OC / EC)pri distribution, which is fortuitous rather than norm. In contrast, MRS provides an unbiased SOC estimation when measurement uncertainty is small. MRS results are sensitive to the magnitude of measurement uncertainty but the bias would not exceed 23 % if the uncertainty is within 20 %.

scholarly journals Information literacy in the humanities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Pettersson
Keyword(s):  
Information Literacy ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Round Table ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
New Ways Of Working ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

Many university libraries hold cultural heritage collections that are unknown to the majority of students. The digitisation of these collections offers new ways of working with primary sources, and with it, an increasing interest in archives and older collections. This development has made us reflect on our information literacy classes within the humanities. Are we too influenced by the STEM and social science interpretations of information literacy and their focus on the peer-reviewed article? We want to challenge this view and discuss what a humanities approach to information literacy could incorporate.We want to invite you to a discussion on how we can integrate archival material and other primary sources into our classes,thus broadening mainstream information literacy to include primary source literacy (see ACRL’s Guidelines for primary source literacy, 2018). Our understanding is that this topic is generally not discussed at Nordic information literacy conferences, and our literature review indicates that this field is mostly addressed by special collections librarians and archivists (Hauck & Robinson, 2018; Hubbard & Lotts, 2013; Samuelson & Coker, 2014).In addition, in digital humanities pedagogy, there is need for reflection on data or sources beyond “tool-based thinking” which this approach would open up for(Giannetti, 2017). We will share two examples of how we have engaged students with primary sources and discuss the pedagogical challenges and opportunities. Our aim has been to go beyond show and tell and let the students actively work with primary sources. One example, from the Master’s Program in Digital Humanities, involved working with digitised sources using the platform Omeka. In the other, first year students from the Department of Conservation explored primary sources from the Gothenburg Exhibitionheld in 1923. Hopefully, this round table can be a stepping-stone for forming a network where we continue to share our experiences.

scholarly journals New about the little-known and missing works of Oleksandr Murashko: the attribution of portraits of the German consul Erich Hering’s wife, artist A. Babenko, Tetiana Yashvil, Lidia Murashko, paintings "Evening"

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-81
Author(s):  
Daria Dobriian
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Field Of View ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Artistic Works

The author attempts to attribute the lesser-known artistic works by Oleksandr Murashko (1875–1919). Some of them were considered lost, e.g. the images of Tetiana Jashvil or Lidia Murashko. Others, including a portrait of the German consul Erich Hering’s wife, as well as a portrait of the artist A. Babenko (Murashko’s pupil) and the painting "Evening", can still appear in the field of view of researchers. The author describes primary sources that allowed her to carry out the attribution, and details that suggested the correct way for the scientific search. A number of iconic paintings by Oleksandr Murashko are known only from some black-and-white or colour reproductions. First and foremost, we are talking about such works of the artist as "Merry-go-round", "Sunday" (1909), "On terrace", "Over the old pond", which trails were lost in the early 20th century. The author already touched upon the question of these paintings’ fate (except for "Merry-go-round"). Nevertheless for a deeper understanding of the artist's work, it is necessary to explore the lesser-known, even lost pieces. The primary source for studying the heritage of the artist are listings of his works, that were compiled around 1919 by Marharyta Murashko. Despite the fact that they contain many inaccuracies and errors, the value of these listings cannot be overemphasized. Inter alia, there are works, which locations are unknown by far. But the idea of some of them can be formed from photos from the documentary and archival trust of the National Art Museum of Ukraine. Some researchers have managed to establish the names of many persons portrayed by Murashko, but there is a need to make further researches in this field. The attribution of each painting proves that even a limited amount of sources can give us an idea of the appearance of lost works, regardless the fact that not all of them were reproduced on the pages of printed publications or as photographs. At the same time, the assessment of various sources allows us to attribute the little-known portraits, because the names of many depicted persons remain unknown. But with each passing year it becomes more complex to set them.

Primary Sourcing: the Ten Thousand Rooms Platform for Digital Annotation of Primary Source Images

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 536-543
Author(s):  
Nicholas Frisch
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Or Groups

AbstractThe Ten Thousand Rooms Project offers a modern digital solution to an age-old scholarly problem: a platform for annotating source texts for easy reference and retrieval, while facilitating easy access to original sources. Individuals or groups can upload scans of primary sources and annotate over the image, in multiple layers, toggling annotations on or off per research and reading needs. The project is hosted by Yale University.

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