digital medieval manuscripts
DESCRIPTION
Part of a three-part presentation on IIIF, SharedCanvas, and the medieval manuscript use-case. Given at DLF2012.TRANSCRIPT
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DIGITAL MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTSA Use-Case for an Interoperable Digital Library Infrastructure
Benjamin Albritton
Stanford University Libraries
@bla222
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Overview• Background• Current State: A World of Silos• Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case• Toward a Digital Manuscript Commons
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BackgroundAndrew W. Mellon Foundation funded numerous manuscript digitization projects over several decades
All had in common: • Inability to share data across silos to satisfy scholarly use• Inability to leverage existing infrastructure• No sustainability model for data or access
Goal:• Interoperability between repositories and tools
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Image Repositories• A “standard model”• Lots of images• Descriptive metadata• Silo interfaces
• Built-in tools• No way to access
outside “stuff” for comparison
• Mediates use• Expensive to
maintain
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Current State: A World of Silos
DIAMM Parker on the Web e-codices And so on…
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Silos: What you can do
• Access data from a single repository• Use the tools that repository supports• See images in the way that repository allows• See curated descriptions of the material• See approved additional material• Search and browse within a single repository
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Silos: What you can do
• Access data from a single repository• Use the tools that repository supports• See images in the way that repository allows• See curated descriptions of the material• See approved additional material• Search and browse within a single repository
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Silos: What you can do
• Access data from a single repository• Use the tools that repository supports• See images in the way that repository allows• See curated descriptions of the material• See approved additional material• Search and browse within a single repository
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Silos: What you can do
• Access data from a single repository• Use the tools that repository supports• See images in the way that repository allows• See curated descriptions of the material• See approved additional material• Search and browse within a single repository
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Silos: What you can do
• Access data from a single repository• Use the tools that repository supports• See images in the way that repository allows• See curated descriptions of the material• See approved additional material• Search and browse within a single repository
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Silos: What you can do
• Access data from a single repository• Use the tools that repository supports• See images in the way that repository allows• See curated descriptions of the material• See approved additional material• Search and browse within a single repository
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Silos: What you can’t do
• Access data from any other repositories• Use any other tools• See images any other way• Contribute or correct descriptions (often)• Add additional material or comments (often)• Search across repositories unless federated search has been implemented
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Silos: What you can’t do
• Access data from any other repositories• Use any other tools• See images any other way• Contribute or correct descriptions (often)• Add additional material or comments (often)• Search across repositories unless federated search has been implemented
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Silos: What you can’t do
• Access data from any other repositories• Use any other tools• See images any other way• Contribute or correct descriptions (often)• Add additional material or comments (often)• Search across repositories unless federated search has been implemented
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Silos: What you can’t do
• Access data from any other repositories• Use any other tools• See images any other way• Contribute or correct descriptions (often)• Add additional material or comments (often)• Search across repositories unless federated search has been implemented
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Silos: What you can’t do
• Access data from any other repositories• Use any other tools• See images any other way• Contribute or correct descriptions (often)• Add additional material or comments (often)• Search across repositories unless federated search has been implemented
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Silos: What you can’t do
• Access data from any other repositories• Use any other tools• See images any other way• Contribute or correct descriptions (often)• Add additional material or comments (often)• Search across repositories unless federated search has been implemented
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Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case
• What is a Manuscript?• What is its relation to a digital
facsimile?• What is the relation of a
transcription of a facsimile to the original object?
• What is the relation of commentary on the facsimile to the original object?
• Who uses these objects?• How do users interact with the
facsimile?• What information is important? Walters Ms. W.188, Book of Hours in Dutch
(fol. 16r)
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Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case
• What is a Manuscript?• What is its relation to a digital
facsimile?• What is the relation of a
transcription of a facsimile to the original object?
• What is the relation of commentary on the facsimile to the original object?
• Who uses these objects?• How do users interact with the
facsimile?• What information is important? Walters Ms. W.188, Book of Hours in Dutch
(fol. 16r)
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Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case
• What is a Manuscript?• What is its relation to a digital
facsimile?• What is the relation of a
transcription of a facsimile to the original object?
• What is the relation of commentary on the facsimile to the original object?
• Who uses these objects?• How do users interact with the
facsimile?• What information is important? Walters Ms. W.188, Book of Hours in Dutch
(fol. 16r)
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Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case
• What is a Manuscript?• What is its relation to a digital
facsimile?• What is the relation of a
transcription of a facsimile to the original object?
• What is the relation of commentary on the facsimile to the original object?
• Who uses these objects?• How do users interact with the
facsimile?• What information is important? Walters Ms. W.188, Book of Hours in Dutch
(fol. 16r)
![Page 22: Digital Medieval Manuscripts](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081512/555069c5b4c905cc0f8b46de/html5/thumbnails/22.jpg)
Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case
• What is a Manuscript?• What is its relation to a digital
facsimile?• What is the relation of a
transcription of a facsimile to the original object?
• What is the relation of commentary on the facsimile to the original object?
• Who uses these objects?• How do users interact with the
facsimile?• What information is important? Walters Ms. W.188, Book of Hours in Dutch
(fol. 16r)
![Page 23: Digital Medieval Manuscripts](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081512/555069c5b4c905cc0f8b46de/html5/thumbnails/23.jpg)
Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case
• What is a Manuscript?• What is its relation to a digital
facsimile?• What is the relation of a
transcription of a facsimile to the original object?
• What is the relation of commentary on the facsimile to the original object?
• Who uses these objects?• How do users interact with the
facsimile?• What information is important? Walters Ms. W.188, Book of Hours in Dutch
(fol. 16r)
![Page 24: Digital Medieval Manuscripts](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081512/555069c5b4c905cc0f8b46de/html5/thumbnails/24.jpg)
Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case
• What is a Manuscript?• What is its relation to a digital
facsimile?• What is the relation of a
transcription of a facsimile to the original object?
• What is the relation of commentary on the facsimile to the original object?
• Who uses these objects?• How do users interact with the
facsimile?• What information is important? Walters Ms. W.188, Book of Hours in Dutch
(fol. 16r)
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Working with Surrogates
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Uses of Manuscript Facsimiles
Parker Library, CCCC 61(fol. 1v)
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Manuscript Information
Parker Library, CCCC 61(fol. 1v)
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Common Problems and Challenges• Transcription, Annotation, and other activities• Disbound or rebound manuscripts• Manuscripts with flaps, folds, or other structures• Manuscript fragments• Dispersed leaves• Secondary literature “about” the object• Related manuscripts in separate repositories• International teams of users
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Common Problems and Challenges• Transcription, Annotation, and other activities• Disbound or rebound manuscripts• Manuscripts with flaps, folds, or other structures• Manuscript fragments• Dispersed leaves• Secondary literature “about” the object• Related manuscripts in separate repositories• International teams of users
![Page 30: Digital Medieval Manuscripts](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081512/555069c5b4c905cc0f8b46de/html5/thumbnails/30.jpg)
Common Problems and Challenges• Transcription, Annotation, and other activities• Disbound or rebound manuscripts• Manuscripts with flaps, folds, or other structures• Manuscript fragments• Dispersed leaves• Secondary literature “about” the object• Related manuscripts in separate repositories• International teams of users
![Page 31: Digital Medieval Manuscripts](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081512/555069c5b4c905cc0f8b46de/html5/thumbnails/31.jpg)
Common Problems and Challenges• Transcription, Annotation, and other activities• Disbound or rebound manuscripts• Manuscripts with flaps, folds, or other structures• Manuscript fragments• Dispersed leaves• Secondary literature “about” the object• Related manuscripts in separate repositories• International teams of users
![Page 32: Digital Medieval Manuscripts](https://reader036.vdocuments.site/reader036/viewer/2022081512/555069c5b4c905cc0f8b46de/html5/thumbnails/32.jpg)
Common Problems and Challenges• Transcription, Annotation, and other activities• Disbound or rebound manuscripts• Manuscripts with flaps, folds, or other structures• Manuscript fragments• Dispersed leaves• Secondary literature “about” the object• Related manuscripts in separate repositories• International teams of users
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Repository to Repository Interactions
• One-off sharing• Human-brokered• But:
• Expense• Not scalable• What if:
• A text repository wants images for all MSS of its texts?
• An image repository wants texts for all its images?
Parker: CCCC 410 – De speculatione musice
CHMTL: 1970, Corpus scriptorum text of De speculatione musice
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But what about…• Other resources
“about” an object or text
• … stored and served in other places
• … that you might not know about
• How to build extensible facsimiles?
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Toward a Digital Manuscript Commons
The Problem:
• Medieval projects as “curated and comprehensive” efforts• Technical and social silos• Expensive to maintain• Difficult to extend
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Toward a Digital Manuscript Commons
The Goal:
• Toward a “commons” of distributed resources
• Aggregation of information and extensibility vs. “curated and comprehensive”
• New approaches to what can be done with digitized and born-digital material
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Designing Modular Repositories and Tools
Image Data (Canonical)
Image Viewer
Discovery
Annotation
Metadata (Canonical)
Transcription
Image Viewer
Image Analysi
s
Discovery
Tool X?
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Interoperability• Expose resources to
shared tools and repositories
• Enhance resources
• Exposure is low cost• Shared tools let other
people make your stuff better
• Specialists build the domain-specific tools
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CHMTL text + Parker image in T-PEN
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Re-presented with text in side-by-side view…
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… or overlaid
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Examples of other resources attached to the facsimile
• Audio performances of notated music
• Overlaid text transcription
• User-generated comments (public and private)
• Also:• Data sets• Mark-up• Base
image choices
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Building the Commons• Content providers:
• Use common data model: SharedCanvas• Use common image API: IIIF
• Make use of distributed resources to support new projects• Aggregation and extensibility vs. “curated and comprehensive”
• Front-end branding with back-end interoperability• Shared development costs instead of “reinventing the
wheel”• Esp. viewers and discovery interfaces
• Have manuscripts in your collection? Join the conversation: [email protected]
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Participants• Repositories:
• Stanford University Libraries• Yale University• e-codices• British Library• Bibliothèque national de France• Oxford University Libraries
• Tools:• T-PEN (Saint Louis University) (http://t-pen.org/TPEN)• DM (Drew University) (http://ada.drew.edu/dmproject/)
• Data model and APIs• SharedCanvas (http://www.shared-canvas.org)• IIIF (http://lib.stanford.edu/iiif)
• Thanks to:• The generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation• Participants in the DMS Technical Council