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Bewoulf, as viewed in the iPhone version of the British Library's Treasures app(Credit:British Library)
Injecting some high-brow culture into a smartphone realm more characterized by people texting at dinner and playing videogames on the subway, the British Library has released an application to allow exploration of some of its collection.
OK, so perhaps it won't mean people rushing to read Beowulf in the original Old English from 1,000 years ago. But it's nice to know the option is there, and the application comes with commentary from experts such as a video on Beowulf by linguist David Crystal.
In any event, it is encouraging at least to this history and museum fan that the Treasures app gives a new digital lease on life to a wide range of historic cultural artifacts. The app will cost $4 foriPhone and Android and $6 foriPad once a half-price promotion ends January 24. Among Treasures' subjects:
The Gutenberg Bible, Lindisfarne Gospels, and Sultan Baybars' Qur'an;
Handwritten lyrics by the Beatles;
Original scores by Mozart, Schubert, Handel, and Purcell;
Charles ****ens' handwritten draft of "Nicholas Nickleby";
The writings of Jane Austen as a teenager;
The battle plan of Admiral Horatio Nelson before beating the French at the Battle of Trafalgar;
Letters by Galileo and notebooks from Leonardo Da Vinci;
Oracle bones from China about 2,000 years ago;
And it's the British Library, so of course there has to be a version of the Magna Carta from 1215.
I had problems running the app on an AndroidNexus One phone, though. First came a seemingly interminably waiting spinner. Next came a note that assets would have to be downloaded to my SD card, a bugaboo of the Nexus One's limited internal memory. Fine--but then the installation progress bar crawled up to 19 percent over something like an hour.
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