http://quintessenceofham.org The story of his assiette of popes-eyes, the quintessence of ham for sauce, and the gravy of twenty-two partridges for sauce for a brace, was always beyond the credit of any sensible person. –William Verral, A Complete System of Cookery Fri, 28 May 2010 13:39:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 http://quintessenceofham.org/2010/05/28/diderot-as-digital-humanist/ http://quintessenceofham.org/2010/05/28/diderot-as-digital-humanist/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 13:39:39 +0000 Sean http://quintessenceofham.org/?p=179 The following piece is loosely based on a talk I gave at the 2010 meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies in Albuquerque, NM. Although the research and reference management software Zotero has garnered plenty of attention for its pithy taglines and millions of delighted users, less well-known is the mission statement that guides every [...]]]> http://quintessenceofham.org/2010/05/28/diderot-as-digital-humanist/feed/ 1 http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/08/07/teaching-with-zotero-groups-or-eating-my-own-dog-food-part-1/ http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/08/07/teaching-with-zotero-groups-or-eating-my-own-dog-food-part-1/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:41:04 +0000 Sean http://quintessenceofham.org/?p=142 This fall I, along with many others, will use Zotero groups in the classroom for the first time. With their unprecedented collaborative functionality, Zotero groups promise to transform the way that instructors and students interact with sources, particularly in research-intensive classes. Although the Zotero groups functionality is already well-established – there are currently over 3200 [...]]]> http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/08/07/teaching-with-zotero-groups-or-eating-my-own-dog-food-part-1/feed/ 10 http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/06/10/a-few-more-dismissal-details/ http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/06/10/a-few-more-dismissal-details/#comments Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:14:07 +0000 Sean http://quintessenceofham.org/?p=107 We’re still waiting for the court reporter’s transcript from last week’s dismissal of the lawsuit filed by Thomson Reuters targeting Zotero, but a few more details have surfaced regarding the nature of the ruling. Judge Gaylord L. Finch, Jr. dismissed the Thomson Reuters complaint due to a lack of jurisdiction. The dismissal was without prejudice, which [...]]]> http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/06/10/a-few-more-dismissal-details/feed/ 0 http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/06/04/thomson-reuters-lawsuit-dismissed/ http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/06/04/thomson-reuters-lawsuit-dismissed/#comments Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:36:10 +0000 Sean http://quintessenceofham.org/?p=99 I’m delighted to announce that this morning the Fairfax Circuit Court dismissed the lawsuit filed against Zotero by Thomson Reuters. The lawsuit had claimed that the Center for History and New Media “reverse-engineered” Thomson Reuters’s EndNote software to provide data interoperability between Zotero and EndNote. As co-director of the Zotero project along with Dan Cohen, I [...]]]> http://quintessenceofham.org/2009/06/04/thomson-reuters-lawsuit-dismissed/feed/ 29 http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/12/17/zotero-makes-the-new-york-times/ http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/12/17/zotero-makes-the-new-york-times/#comments Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:41:36 +0000 Sean http://quintessenceofham.org/?p=89 Today Olivia Judson features Zotero in her excellent science blog, The Wild Side. In a generally positive review Judson points to Zotero’s ease of use and ability to grab metadata from a variety of sources. Fortunately for Zoterons, the features that Judson finds lacking in Zotero are already present in either the current 1.0.7 release [...]]]> http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/12/17/zotero-makes-the-new-york-times/feed/ 0 http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/11/11/quebec-resto-roundup/ http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/11/11/quebec-resto-roundup/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:05:57 +0000 Sean http://quintessenceofham.org/?p=72 Sarah and I recently traveled to Québec, where I gave a paper at a French history conference. I’ve included our dining notes below: Thursday. The trip does not begin auspiciously. Le Cochon Dingue: Dessicated luke-warm mussels served in an undesirably farinaceous “cream” sauce. Alarming. Le Café St. Malo: Bourride-like fish soup was a good start. Sarah’s blood sausage [...]]]> http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/11/11/quebec-resto-roundup/feed/ 0 http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/11/11/zotero-website-overhauled/ http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/11/11/zotero-website-overhauled/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:21:00 +0000 Sean http://quintessenceofham.org/?p=62 Notice anything different? Aside from the addition of “Login” and “Register” links to the upper right corner of the Zotero site, you might not detect many changes. The most visible difference is new unified login functionality to support the site’s various functional modules. Users can also now use an OpenID account to authenticate with the Zotero [...]]]> http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/11/11/zotero-website-overhauled/feed/ 2 http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/10/29/gmu-responds-to-thomson-reuters-lawsuit/ http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/10/29/gmu-responds-to-thomson-reuters-lawsuit/#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:08:13 +0000 Sean http://quintessenceofham.org/?p=57 The full press release can be found at the university’s media relations site, but the upshot is that George Mason University has formulated a strong response that includes dropping its EndNote license and retaining the Zotero project’s contested EndNote compatibility feature. This functionality allows users to read their own EndNote styles (.ens files) and has [...]]]> http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/10/29/gmu-responds-to-thomson-reuters-lawsuit/feed/ 1 http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/07/29/digital-scholarship-ha-ha-funny-or-just-funny/ http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/07/29/digital-scholarship-ha-ha-funny-or-just-funny/#comments Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:26:27 +0000 Sean http://quintessenceofham.org/?p=22 In a recent New York Review of Books piece, “The Library in the New Age”, Robert Darnton offers his thoughts on the research library in the digital age. Darnton argues persuasively against any real displacement of traditional media by digital resources, suggesting instead that these two should complement each other rather than converge. As a [...]]]> http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/07/29/digital-scholarship-ha-ha-funny-or-just-funny/feed/ 0 http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/06/17/the-semantic-web-circa-1934/ http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/06/17/the-semantic-web-circa-1934/#comments Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:19:21 +0000 Sean http://quintessenceofham.org/?p=21 The Times has a great story today by Alex Wright on Paul Otlet’s early efforts to create a network of the information akin to today’s Web. In spite of bloviating along the lines of “The hyperlink is one of the most underappreciated inventions of the last century” (Kelvin Kelly, quoted for the article, apparently both [...]]]> http://quintessenceofham.org/2008/06/17/the-semantic-web-circa-1934/feed/ 0