R. B. Toth Associates

Revealing Lost Texts in the Sinai Desert One of the oldest libraries in the world is also one of the most remote, located at the Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai Desert. Within fortress-like walls at the base of Mount Sinai i...

Register now for the 6 Nov evening Smithsonian Associates Program on our work in St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/pr...

Great opportunity for scholars to carry on Will Noel's legacy at Princeton University Library with the Will Noel Innovative Cultural Heritage Research Grant library.princeton.edu/services/spe...

Revealing Lost Texts in the Sinai Desert One of the oldest libraries in the world is also one of the most remote, located at the Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai Desert. Within fortress-like walls at the base of Mount Sinai i...

My Smithsonian Associates program – an oldie but goodie – will be virtual again this year on the evening of 6 November: smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/pr...

The monks’ revolution: St. Catherine’s battle for independence For the monks, the new law amounts to nothing less than “erasing the monastery’s independence”

www.madamasr.com/en/2025/09/0...

The William G. Noel Eureka Fund - Digital Scriptorium The thing to do with data is to let it out for everyone to have it. --William G. Noel (1965 - 2024), from “Revealing the Lost Codex of Archimedes” TEDxSummit, April 2012 The William G. Noel Eureka Fun...

Thanks to all who have contributed in Will Noel's memory:
digital-scriptorium.org/support-ds/e...

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
www.emersonkent.com/speeches/pea...

Always great to get back to SLAC SSRL and great team there. Hard to believe 20 years since we 1st did pioneering X-Ray Fluorescence imaging of Archimedes Palimpsest with Will Noel & Uwe Bergmann. This set the stage for continued XRF cultural heritage studies of manuscripts, printed works & fossils.

Will is honored in the heavens with Asteroid 53025 named Willnoel. This GIF of images from Pan-STARRS observatory, Hawaii, on 16 March 2014 shows @willnoel moving through the night sky.

William G. Noel Eureka Fund Help Digital Scriptorium reach their goal by donating or sharing with your friends.

Today we honor Will Noel's 60th Birthday. His legacy lives on in continued open access data sharing, advanced imaging & collaboration. To further honor him donate to the William G. Noel Eureka Fund for the digitization of manuscripts & innovative imaging www.paypal.com/donate?campa...

Best of luck, and stay in touch, especially if we can be of assistance in the DC area or further afield.... #ThanksBrett

#ThanksBrett for all you've done to bring cultural heritage into the digital world. Your pioneering work with a wide variety of NEH projects has increased the digital access, awareness & utility of our cultural heritage. It has been a privilege to work on many of these with your support & guidance

A Magna Carta at Harvard Law School | Harvard Magazine A rare original surfaces at Harvard at an “almost providential” moment.

Pleased we could support Harvard Law Library with advanced multispectral imaging for its authentication of original 1300 Magna Carta
www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/05/magn...

Harvard won’t comply with Trump administration’s demands — Harvard Gazette “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” says President Garber.

Finally one institution is taking a stand against arbitrary and capricious exercise of presumed executive power:
news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

Trump’s Latest Cuts Will Hit Small-Town Culture Hard The NEH budget is tiny. The loss is huge.

Good summary of the impact of cuts to 0.000054 percent of the federal budget

slate.com/news-and-pol...

Want to see the scope of what the NEH grant terminations is? The ACH ( @ach.bsky.social ) has compiled a database: impact.ach.org

We are grateful to donors who have already given, but those past donations won’t tide us over forever. We need more financial support for our staff and students. Please consider making a donation as we carry on our work.
rrchnm.org/news/carryin...

For literally pennies per person we reach, we’ve had a huge impact on public understandings of the past. We can keep doing the important work of democratizing access to history because of people like you, who have donated to RRCHNM’s work in the past.

Last week we learned that 6 of our active NEH awards—totaling $789k in unspent funds—were immediately terminated by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.This is obviously a blow, and a serious one, to our work.But we will carry on. To see our terminated grants rrchnm.org/news/carryin...

On Monday, March 31, 2025 we learned that DOGE is targeting the NEH with the aim of substantially reducing its staff, cutting the agency’s grant programs, and rescinding grants that have already been awarded.

Learn what steps you can take here: nhalliance.org/federal-fund...

Notify NHA about grant terminations!

It is imperative that grantees who have been affected by the terminations reach out to their Members of Congress directly. We can help you make this contact. Fill out this form to let NHA know about the termination & get contact info for the appropriate staffers: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Traces of US soldiers during our Civil War lost with NEH cuts:
"The graffiti on these walls is raw, unadorned, uncensored, sometimes profane, and often poignant, offering us insights into soldiers’ voices and behaviors that have nothing to do with keeping up appearances for a home front audience."

Things are moving along with the Graffiti Houses Project! Here are some photos of the measuring and imaging processes used to document the historic graffiti.

Photo credit: Matthew Kaiser, City of Fairfax, VA, taken January 17.

Our imaging of soldiers' graffiti in a Northern Virginia Civil War era house today was colder than December in St. Catherine's Monastery at 5,200 feet in the Sinai a number of years ago

Public Domain Day 2025 | Duke University School of Law Tweet January 1, 2025 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1929 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1924! By Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle Directors, Duke Center for the Study of the Public D...

Public Domain Day was Wednesday this year in the USA, with numerous creative works now freely available, including movies, books, art and music web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicd...

That Time A Particle Accelerator Helped Discover The Lost Works Of Archimedes The ancient polymath probably would have approved.

Recent article reflects on the leadership of Will Noel in this initial installment of his rich legacy, including pioneering work with optical and x-ray imaging during the early 2000s: www.iflscience.com/that-time-a-...

Kicking off @nehgov.bsky.social grant for digitization of historic US Civil War soldiers graffiti with readily available technology & @georgemasonu.bsky.social

Similar application here

A Decade in Mali “It began with a dinner in 2013...”

HMML's digitization work in Mali is complete. Partnerships with hundreds of manuscript repositories resulted in the creation of an estimated 4.25 million unique image files, representing 302,000 manuscripts digitally preserved. Cataloging is ongoing.


Learn more: hmml.org/stories/a-de...

Paper in latest @sims_mss Journal highlights importance of open access to all multispectral image data for continued & varied research "A Second Look at Multispectral Data of Late Medieval Music Manuscripts" muse.jhu.edu/article/930878

library.princeton.edu/sites/defaul...