1606, 2015

Palmyra in 1926 (from the Guardian Archive, originally published 12th June 1926)

By Mary Fisk|June 16, 2015|Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica, History|0 comments

Palmyra panorama view shortly after sunrise (2005) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PalmyraPanoramaZoom.jpg In April 1926, the Manchester Guardian’s correspondent was in Beirut for a congress. After the exacting business of formal dinners and fetes,  the party set out to explore the historic sites of the region, including Byblos, Tripoli and Krak des Chevaliers – and finally to Palmyra. This account (whilst coloured with some of the stereotypes of the day) gives a vivid depiction

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2101, 2014

North Korea in the news

By Victoria Bird|January 21, 2014|Politics and International Relations, South East Asia|0 comments

The British Library is currently trialling NK News (North Korea News).  From 13th January to 12th February 2014 users onsite in British Library reading rooms will be able to access the site from BL computer terminals. User feedback is welcomed and will be used to determine the business case for taking out a subscription to the site, so get yourselves down there if you are interested! Further information can be found

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0208, 2013

Elections in the news

By Victoria Bird|August 2, 2013|Politics and International Relations|0 comments

Following several high-profile elections in the SOAS regions, the blog Elections in the News contains links to opinion and debate and is curated by an Academic Support Librarian at LSE. Photo from Flickr: “In the news” Some rights reserved by RambergMediaImages.

0208, 2012

On the Aleppo Codex

By Mary Fisk|August 2, 2012|Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica, Religions|0 comments

Click to read an article from the New York Times on the “murky and often contradictory story” of the travels of “the oldest, most complete, most accurate text of the Hebrew Bible” dating from around 930 AD. The Codex has been digitized and made available by the Ben Zvi Institute in Jerusalem. Click here to view the Codex website. There is a another link to the digitized text. The text can

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