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There have been encrypted connections among human societies for sending confidential messages a long time ago. In the history of Iran also many encryption lines have been used by crypto-writers. With the telegraph introduction, the old encryption lines were out of use. by the invention of new lines, they got used in confidential conversations and reports. This research's central question is to find how the former lines got removed, and Iranian crypto-writers invented the new ones. This research aims to view Iranian crypto-writers' attempts to find a solution for encryption connections through a security canal in Qajar periods. In this research, we have used library resources, especially lithography books and documents. The use of developmental encryption in encrypted connections, especially in telegraph, resulted from the extending political and economic relationship with the western world and being familiar with the modern west cryptography and finding the simple usage rather than the traditional one in the Qajar period. Hence, some Iranian crypto-writers made new encrypted lines with the necessary assurance for sending the internal and external encrypted messages.

This paper tackles some elements of Cherubino Ghirardacci’s life and biography. He was the son of a notary and grew up in an educated environment, with a particular interest in the history of the city, and in the juridical documents that defined it. Also the study of chronicles contributed to form his own way of writing history, even though he cannot be defined as a chronicler. He was also the first to write history in a modern way, by researching documents that were contemporary to the events and to the figures he narrated and described, and by leaning on them. In addition, he was a religious, pledged to infuse the principles, established by the Council of Trent, in the rules of lay confraternities.

The annotation-free word spotting method that is proposed in this paper makes document images searchable without requiring any labeled training data. Thus, our method supports the exploration of a document collection directly without demanding any manual efforts from the users for the preparation of a training dataset. Our method works in the query-by-example scenario where the user selects an exemplary occurrence of the query word. Afterwards, the entire collection of document images is searched according to visual similarity to the query. The proposed method requires only minimal assumptions about the visual appearance of text. This is achieved by processing document images as a whole without requiring a given segmentation of the images on word level or on line level. Therefore, the method is also segmentation-free. Word size variabilities can be handled by representing the sequential structure of text with a statistical sequence model. In order to make the computationally costly application of the sequence model feasible in practice, regions are retrieved according to approximate similarity with an efficient model decoding algorithm. Re-ranking these regions according to the visual similarity obtained with the sequence model leads to highly accurate word spotting results. The method is evaluated on five benchmark datasets. In the segmentation-free query-by-example scenario where no annotated training data is available, the method outperforms all other methods that have been evaluated on any of these five benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an introduction to the study of European migration into Asia-Pacific through the case study of northern Taiwan. Here, several Spanish and Dutch colonial outposts were founded during the first part of the seventeenth century. Since 2011 and up to 2016 we have uncovered six burials of the cemetery of the Spanish colony of San Salvador de Kelang (Heping Dao, Keelung) (1626–42). The cemetery was associated with the Convento de Todos los Santos, Convent of All Saints, also discovered anew during our excavations. DNA analysis shows that at least one of the individuals was of European descent. This finding is unprecedented in Asia-Pacific within this early chronological framework. The archaeological evidence stands in contrast to the scarcity of contemporary written information relating to death and burials, both in Spanish and Dutch sources. We use the written sources to contextualize the archaeological data, inquiring about the life trajectories of the European colonists in Taiwan, people who truly lived in a global world. We aim to synthesize these data to create a documentary background for future research towards a better understanding of the European migration patterns into Asia-Pacific within cultural, biological, and demographic dimensions. This study offers a valuable contrast with research on the same topic elsewhere in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The analysis of historical death certificates has enormous potential for understanding how the health of populations was shaped by diseases and epidemics and by the implementation of specific interventions. In Brazil, the systematic archiving of mortality records was initiated only in 1944-hence the analysis of death registers before this time requires searching for these documents in public archives, notaries, parishes, and especially ancient cemeteries, which are often the only remaining source of information about these deaths. This article describes an effort to locate original death certificates in Brazil and document their organization, accessibility, and preservation.Methods: To this end, we conducted an exploratory study in 19 of the 27 Brazilian states, focusing on the period surrounding the 1918 influenza pandemic (1913-1921). We included 55 cemeteries, 22 civil archives, and one military archive.Results: Apart from few exceptions, the results show the absence of a curatorial policy for the organization, access or even physical preservation of this material, frequently leading to unavailability, deterioration, and ultimately its complete loss.Conclusions: This study indicates the need to promote the preservation of a historical heritage that is a key to understanding historical epidemiological patterns and human responses to global health threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historic documents are a useful tool in understanding post-contact archaeological sites. Documents can show different forms of interaction between Europeans and Native Americans and chronicle events that are invisible in the archaeological record. Using interactions between the Lower Creek and Westerners as a case study, a sample of 300 historic documents, written between 1620 and 1840, were analyzed and quantified. Results indicate that this method of quantification reflects historic events seen both in the documents and archaeological records and measures the level of interaction between Native Americans and colonialist through time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Biodeterioration of paper and parchment in ancient books and documents represents a cause of great concern for libraries and archives all over the world. The degradation processes occurring in paper, typically occur over extended timescales (~20 to >200 years). The study of the mechanisms underlying the microbiological attack of historical materials has been widely practiced and still represents one of the main focuses of those institutions and laboratories that are involved in cultural heritage conservation. A total of seventy historical manuscripts stored in different public and personal libraries were sampled for isolation and characterization of cellulolytic bacteria. The age of the manuscripts varied from 170-1030 years old. The characterization of the bacterial isolates was based on colony morphology, biochemical test and their ability to hydrolyze cellulose. Fourty nine bacterial isolates including 46 gram positive rods and 3 gram positive cocci were purified for further characterization. Fourty six gram positive isolates were sporeformers belonging to the genus Bacillus. Iodine solution was used to detect cellulolytic activity on CMC agar.. Results have shown that 16% of the isolates were weak producers, 53% moderate, 21% high and 10% v. high producers. Keywords: cellulolytic bacteria, historic documents,paper, deterioration. Corresponding author E-mail: shababa_bahjat@yahoo.com

Assessing and communicating the risks posed by natural hazards requires not only a thorough understanding of the hazards themselves but also an understanding of the spatial and temporal impact of successive events from the same source(s). This approach is enhanced by the lens of time, which is often missing from modern responses to recent hazards. Archaeological studies, in contrast, examine the long-term consequences of hazardous events, but often lack details of the event chronology and immediate human impact that are available for recent events. Here we show ways in which historical records can bridge the gap between modern and prehistoric studies. We focus on the volcanically and seismically active region that hosts the capital city of Guatemala, a city that has been relocated twice in response to hazardous events since its original founding in 1527. More specifically, we examine documents – “ Autos Hechos Sobre el Lastimoso, Estrago y Ruina que Padecio esta Ciudad de Guatemala …” [ Autos ] – that were collected in response to a cascading sequence of volcanic, seismic and mudflow events in 1717 to support a request to the Spanish government to relocate the capital city for a second time. These documents provide exceptional detail about the location of the witnesses, the nature of the hazardous activity and the response of local communities. This detail allows us not only to reconstruct the sequence of events but also to link volcanic activity at Volcán de Fuego to local seismicity and mudflows from Volcán de Agua, which we interpret as triggered by magma intruded after the eruption of Fuego ceased. At the same time, the long and well documented history of the region allows us to examine ways in which a single catastrophic event – in this case a large rainfall-triggered debris flow from Agua in 1541, which destroyed the first capital city – can reverberate through the centuries and affect the response of the local community almost 200 years later, in 1717. The long-term effects are particularly apparent because both the origin and affected area of the mudflow hazard were very different in the two cases. This example thus illustrates the importance of “memorability” (e.g., Slovic, 2000 ) in both the perception of, and response to, hazardous events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the document image binarization problem with a three-stage procedure. First, possible stains and general document background information are removed from the image through a background removal stage. The remaining misclassified background and character pixels are then separated using a Local Co-occurrence Mapping, local contrast and a two-state Gaussian Mixture Model. Finally, some isolated misclassified components are removed by a morphology operator. The proposed scheme offers robust and fast performance, especially for both handwritten and printed documents, which compares favorably with other binarization methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2002-2003 was an annus mirabilis for acquisitions by the National Trust, including, most spectacularly, William Morris's Red House, Kent and Tyntesfield, Somerset, the latter acquired with numerous gifts and grants, [...]

The personal papers and much of the library of the late A.J.N. Richards were presented as a generous gift by the Richards family to the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). They [...]

The personal papers of the late Derek Freeman, including correspondence from 1938 to the time of his death, field notes, and documents concerned chiefly with Samoa and the so-called Mead-Freeman [...]

This article is a guide to using the National Register of Archives, especially for those searching for women's history manuscripts.

An improvement to the content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system for kaou images which has been developed by the authors group is introduced. Kaous are handwritten monograms found on old Japanese documents in a Chinese character-like shapes with artistic decorations. Kaous play an important role in the research of historical documents, which involve browsing and comparison of numerous samples. In this work, a novel method of kaou image modeling for CBIR is introduced, which incorporates the shade information of a closed kaou region in addition to the conventionally used contour characteristics. Dissimilarity of query and dictionary images were calculated as a weighted sum of elementary differences in the positions, contour shapes and colors of the component regions. These elementary differences were evaluated using relaxation matching and empirically defined distance functions. In the experiments, a set of 2455 kaou images were used. It was found that apparently similar kaou images could be retrieved by the proposed method, improving the retrieval quality. . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important part of the European cultural heritage is composed of hand-written documents. Many of these documents were drawn up with iron–gall ink. This type of ink present a serious conservation problem, as it slowly oxidizes (‘burns’) the paper it is written on, thereby gradually disintegrating the historic document. Acid hydrolysis of the cellulose and/or the oxidation of organic compounds promoted by radical intermediates that are formed due to the presence of Fe2+ ions are considered to be the cause of the disintegration. μ-XANES measurements were performed with a lateral resolution of 30–50 μm in order to determine the local Fe2+/Fe3+ ratio in 19th C. documents from the Austrian National Archives and fragments of 16th C documents from the Polish National Library. In the 19th C documents, no significant amount of Fe2+ was detected. On the other hand, in the 16th C fragments, significant amounts of Fe2+ and appreciable differences in distribution of Fe2+ and Fe3+ within individual letters/ink stains were observed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Maps may be treated as scientific tools; they may also serve as historic documents. In Indian affairs there is no dearth of maps; in fact, the cartographic record, however rendered and preserved, began almost as early as the European encounter with native Americans. Such maps have taken various forms: field sketches as by missionaries, military personnel or others; exploratory maps and surveyors' plats; and maps rendered as part of, or subsequent to, treaties of land cession. The bulk of relevant maps of Indian distributions and occupancy, however, seem to belong to those that are reconstructions based, in part, on archaeological investigations, knowledge of native informants, field observations, the scanning of firsthand observations of others through letters, diaries and reports, and the interpretative abilities of map makers.While the majority of maps relate to ethnogeography, they also reflect the role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in the administration of tribal lands for a period spanning more than one hundred and fifty years. Maps of Indian affairs focus on land and resources, and they represent a wealth of data awaiting the interested researcher. Although such maps may incorporate some aboriginal knowledge, rarely has Indian cartography contributed to this official record, which has been compiled, surveyed and authenticated by non-Indian. Thus our current cartographic depiction of Indian tribes, their migrations and culture traits, as well as territoriality and contemporary trust lands, reflect the multiple origins of the data and the mixed purposes for which the maps have been prepared.

Vaclav Kural's 'Ceskoslovensko roku 1968. 1 dil: obrodny proces' stands out among various books published by the Czechoslavk federal government as part of an investigation on the infamous 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. It provides new details about important events of the invasion period. Of the biographies of politicians belonging to this period, Vasil Bil'ak's memoirs stand out. The autobiography provides an insight into the personality of a prominent party member. The same cannot be said of the biographies of Alexander Dubcek and Gustav Husak, though they stand out in other aspects.

The second parliament of Charles I assembled on 6 February 1626. On the following day the clergy of the province of Canterbury met in Convocation at Westminster Abbey. The connection [...]

The CIA will potentially release documents that reveal sources and methods of undercover operations if disclosure is not deemed a threat to national security. Claims that the CIA Historical Review Program will not be of much value to historians are therefore misleading and premature. In fact, the CIA is enlisting the help of historians in deciding which documents should be declassified to best benefit the creation of a sound historical record.

Historical documents, such as Sadid al-Din Muhammad 'Awfi's 'Jawami ul-Hikayat wa-Livami'ul-Rivayat' and Minha al-Din Abu Umar Uthman Siraj al-Din al-Juzjani's 'Tabaqat-i-Nasiri' offer valuable information about Central Asian history. Works such as these were written by historians who had moved away from Central Asia after the Mongol conquest. These historians followed the tabaqat form of historiography and captured the social and cultural realities of Central Asia, China and India between the 13th and 15th centuries.