About VMBA

Dear colleagues and friends,
Welcome to the Virtual Magic Bowl Archive. The VMBA has been made possible courtesy of the University of Southampton's EdShare project. 

 
VMBA - The Concept

The aim of VMBA is to provide an environment that will allow collaborative work on material that is otherwise difficult to access or unavailable. The material within this archive consists, at this stage, of parts of three collections: The Moussaieff Collection, The Dehays Collection and The Barakat Collection. By providing access to this material to a number of scholars and their students we aim to encourage the production of critical editions of these texts and their publication. A single portal providing access to a shared virtual environment where this can occur provides a convenient forum for collaboration between a small group of scholars from different institutions spread in a number of countries.

Within VMBA scholars can work on material collaboratively. The virtual archive provides an environment within which scholars and students can work in view of each other and take full advantage of the expertise of the whole collective. Additionally, it will foster a mentoring approach by encouraging the participation of post graduate students who can benefit from the watchful eye, comments and suggestions of the more experienced scholars.

VMBA is the product of a variety of collaborations within The University of Southampton and without. I would like to thank and acknowledge the support and very good will of the EdShare and i-Solutions teams as well as other administrative and academic colleagues at The University of Southampton. I would also like to thank my academic collaborators who have been partners in the formation of the concept and have offered great encouragement throughout. We are all thankful to Dr Moussieff, Mr Dehays and the Barakat Gallery for providing access to their collections for the purposes of academic study.

Dr Dan Levene,
Senior Lecturer,
History, School of Humanities,
University of Southampton,