Archaeologia Cantiana now available on DVD

Celebration of the Kent Archaeological Society's sesquicentennial year in 2007 has kicked off with an early start as the Publications Committee begins taking pre-publication orders for the Archaeologia Cantiana DVD. After two years of careful planning and hard work by the IT Subcommittee of the Publications Committee, the entire run of Archaeologia Cantiana from Volume 1 in 1858 to Volume 125 in 2005, plus Testamenta Cantiana and the specialised Index to Archaeologia Cantiana 1858–1968, is now available on one DVD. Dr. Frank Panton, KAS Hon. Librarian and chairman of the IT Subcommittee, said, "The project links the scholarship of the Society over the past 150 years with modern-day technology to provide a unique tool for future historical and archaeological research on Kent. It is a very fitting way to celebrate the Society's sesquicentennial."

User-Friendly Format

The DVD starts automatically when you insert it into your computer's DVD drive, and will open in any version of Adobe Acrobat Reader software. A contents page appears with a list of volume numbers, and one click of the mouse takes you directly to the opening page of your desired volume. Each volume of Archaeologia Cantiana has been scanned and converted to a PDF file so that the pages and illustrations appear on the screen just as they do in the printed volumes. The text appears on the right-hand side of the screen, and on the left-hand side you will see the table of contents for the volume. Each entry in the table of contents has been “bookmarked” so that clicking on the title of an article will take you directly to the beginning of the chosen article. Every page has also been paginated electronically, and “thumbnail sketches” of each page also appear on the left-hand side of the screen to allow quick browsing through the volume to the desired page. Once you have found your article, you can zoom in or out to increase or decrease the size of the page; you can move through the text from page to page or article to article; you can print copies of articles or illustrations; and in some versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader you can search electronically for individual words. The DVD is not fully searchable, however, because of the inordinate time and expense of proofreading and correcting optical character recognition (OCR) text. You will, of course, be able to consult on screen the six index volumes and the individual indexes at the end of the more recent volumes, just as you do now when using the printed volumes. Best of all, you can do all this without ever going to the library or getting up from your chair.

Pre-Publication Orders

The DVDs will be officially published during the sesquicentennial year in 2007. To determine how many copies of the DVD to make, however, the Publications Committee is now taking orders at the pre-publication price of £20 from individual members of the Society and £50 from institutional members of the Society. Imagine having a complete run of Archaeologia Cantiana on your PC, including all those difficult-to-find rare volumes, to view in the comfort of your own home. Imagine being able to carry around the entire run of Archaeologia Cantiana on your laptop and being able to access any article at any time of day or night. Reserve your copy of the Archaeologia Cantiana DVD by filling in the order form freely included in this issue of the Newsletter and returning it with your cheque (made out to the Kent Archaeological Society) to:

Dr. James M. Gibson, Secretary, KAS Publications Committee,
27 Pine Grove, Maidstone, Kent ME14 2AJ.

James M. Gibson
Publications Committee