DIGITAL MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTSA Use-Case for an Interoperable Digital Library Infrastructure

Benjamin Albritton

Stanford University Libraries

blalbrit@stanford.edu

@bla222

Overview• Background• Current State: A World of Silos• Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case• Toward a Digital Manuscript Commons

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

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

Current State: A World of Silos

DIAMM Parker on the Web e-codices And so on…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Working with Surrogates

Uses of Manuscript Facsimiles

Parker Library, CCCC 61(fol. 1v)

Manuscript Information

Parker Library, CCCC 61(fol. 1v)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Toward a Digital Manuscript Commons

The Problem:

• Medieval projects as “curated and comprehensive” efforts• Technical and social silos• Expensive to maintain• Difficult to extend

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

Designing Modular Repositories and Tools

Image Data (Canonical)

Image Viewer

Discovery

Annotation

Metadata (Canonical)

Transcription

Image Viewer

Image Analysi

s

Discovery

Tool X?

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

CHMTL text + Parker image in T-PEN

Re-presented with text in side-by-side view…

… or overlaid

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

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: dmscommons@lists.stanford.edu

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