Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus

The Metaphor Map of English shows the metaphorical links which have been identified between different areas of meaning. These links can be from the Anglo-Saxon period right up to the present day so the map covers 1300 years of the English language. Find out more

The Berwickshire Place-Name Resource

The resource includes historical research for all Berwickshire place-names on the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger map, including more than 1,600 place-names and 7,000 historical forms presented via a series of interactive maps. Find out more

TheGlasgowStory

As told by some of Scotland's best writers, and illustrated with thousands of images from the collections of the city's world-famous libraries, museums and universities. From football to fashions, Auchenshuggle to Yoker, you'll find it all here. Find out more

Curious Travellers

The project explores Romantic-period accounts of journeys into Wales and Scotland with a focus on the writings of the Flintshire naturalist and antiquarian Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), whose published Tours of both countries did so much to awaken public interest in the ‘peripheries’ of Britain. Find out more

Consultation Letters of Dr William Cullen (1710-1790) at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

A publicly accessible, online scholarly edition of one of the most important archives of eighteenth-century medical "consultation letters", containing more than 20,000 digitised pages. Find out more

The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler: A Catalogue Raisonné

The online catalogue includes some 550 oil paintings and over 1700 works on paper dating from ca 1850 to 1903. The evolution of each painting from sketch to final oil is described and illustrated. Find out more

Interactive Map of Burns Suppers Worldwide

Featuring more than 1000 Burns Suppers across all 7 continents and in 75 countries around the world, this resource seeks to record, illustrate, and offer new insights into the ways in which the tradition of the Burns Supper continues to be maintained, adapted and reimagined in the 21^st century. Find out more

James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was a major figure in 19th century printmaking and created 490 etchings. Over 9500 impressions of these prints have been located and investigated during the project, which completes a series of catalogues raisonnés of Whistler's oeuvre. Find out more

Seeing speech

The resource provides ultrasound tongue imaging (UTI) and lip video of speech, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) video of speech, and 2D midsagittal head animations based on MRI and UTI data. Find out more

Mackintosh Architecture: Context, Making and Meaning

The project provides a richly-illustrated Catalogue of all known architectural projects by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, including over 1200 drawings by Mackintosh and the practice, analytical and contextual essays, a timeline and glossary. Find out more

Week Beginning 24th April 2023

Posted on1st May 20231st May 2023Authorbaitken

This week I continued to fix and reinstate some of the websites that had been taken offline due to the College of Arts server compromise. This took up at least two full days of my time. I also began to set up the website for Ophira Gamliel’s new AHRC funded project and fixed an accessibility issue with the Edinburgh’s Enlightenment map. I responded to a query about QR codes from Alison Wiggins and spoke to Jennifer Smith about the follow-on project for Speak For Yersel, which will expand the site to new areas beyond Scotland.

Other than these tasks I spent the remainder of the week working for the Speech Star project. I added a new database of speech videos to both Speech Star sites. This is the Edinburgh MRI modelled speech database, consisting of around 50 MRI videos, divided into several categories. I retained the folder structure, with expandable / collapsible sections for the three main folders and also for the subfolders contained in each. The display of the video information in the page is similar to the Central Scottish phonetic features page, with boxes for each video containing a ‘Play’ button and the title and lexical items for each video. You can then press ‘Play’ to open the usual video overlay that contains the video, the metadata and the playback speed option. I also added in the introductory text and the logos. Below is a screenshot of how the new database looks with one section open:

I also updated the list of databases, replacing the list of buttons with more pleasing images and text, as you can see below:

I then moved onto a major update to the extIPA chart page. Previously one chart was shown, but an updated extIPA chart was released in 2015 that has many more symbols on it. Eleanor had arranged for a new set of MRI recordings to be made, including many of these newly added sounds. I therefore had to add in a new ‘post-2015’ chart and also add in a secondary set of MRI recordings, in addition to the first set that still needed to be accessible. In addition, a new selection of animations had been created and I needed to add these in.

This page now has tabs for ‘Pre-2015’ and ‘Post-2015’. The ‘Pre-2015’ tab displays the table as it was originally with video type ‘MRI 1’ selected by default. You can then change to ‘MRI 2’ to view the new video clips. More sounds have videos available in ‘MRI 2’ so less symbols are greyed out. The ‘Animation’ tab also now includes links to a lot more videos.

The ‘Post-2015’ tab features all of the rows, columns and symbols from the new chart. It’s been rather tricky getting all of these symbols to display, but I’ve got them all working now. The ‘MRI 1’ table contains all of the original videos, with lots of symbols greyed out as there are no videos for them. ‘MRI 2’ features links to all of the new videos, with a few symbols greyed out as the sounds haven’t been recorded. The ‘animation’ tab has links to the same videos as the ‘Pre-2015’ table, but presented on the new chart. It has been very time-consuming getting this up and running, but I’m sure it will be worth it. Below is a screenshot of the ‘post-2015’ table with all of its symbols and the new ‘MRI 2’ videos populating it.

I also added in a new feedback page to both Speech Star sites which links through to a survey hosted on Qualtrics. I added in a pop-up that prompts people to take the survey using the same code that I created when we added a survey to Seeing Speech and Dynamic Dialects a few years ago.

Monday next week is a holiday, and I’ve also been called up for jury duty, meaning I have to go to court on Tuesday. I really hope I won’t get picked to serve as I have an awful lot to do in the coming weeks, especially for Books and Borrowing – a project I didn’t have any time to work on this week.