Readings
No readings. Come prepared to meet your classmates, talk about yourself, and look at some medieval manuscripts.
This class is devoted to considering how and why you might want to develop an online presence as an individual, but also as heritage institution. We’ll dip out toes into the online world by signing up for an hcommons.org profile, preparing to write blog posts and beginning to Tweet.
Anonymous (@MedievalIndonesia), "My Twitter Account," https://medium.com/@siwaratrikalpa/my-twitter-account-5f766a71c812"
Jesse Stommel, "Promoting Open Access Publications and Academic Projects" http://hybridpedagogy.org/promoting-open-access-publications-and-academic-projects/
Ricoy. M. C., & Feliz, T., "Twitter as a Learning Community in Higher Education." Educational Technology & Society, 19.1 (2016), 237–248. (posted on cuLearn)
Sarah Warner, "How to Destroy Special Collections with Social Media," (31 July 2015): http://sarahwerner.net/blog/2015/07/how-to-destroy-special-collections-with-social-media/
British Library, Medieval Manuscripts Blog, http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/index.html http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2016/07/manuscript-the-tube.html
Pearson, Erika. “All the World Wide Web’s a Stage: The Performance of Identity in Online Social Networks.” First Monday 14, no. 3 (February 25, 2009). http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2162.
In recent years, there have arisen so many platforms for hosting DH projects that it is difficult to know which to choose. We will be looking at how WordPress and Omeka function –the two main platforms we will be using this term- and how they differ (for better or worse) from their alternatives. Since our work largely focusses on being descriptive/ analytical, it is handcrafted, and our data is neither structured nor large, our work is not conducive to working with other platforms.
David R. Brake, "Are We All Online Content Creators Now? Web 2.0 and Digital Divides," Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 19, Issue 3, 1 April 2014, Pages 591– 609, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12042
Terras, M.M and Boyle E.A, "Digital media production and identity: Insights from a psychological perspective," E-Learning and Digital Media. Vol 12, Issue 2, pp. 128 – 146, https://doi-org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/10.1177/2042753014568179
Miriam Posner, Up and Running with Omeka.net
Examples of Blogs to peruse:
Examples of Omeka Sites to peruse:
At the core of many DH projects is the belief that data wants to be free. But, most DH project require lots of labour and usually many people collaborating together (and using expertise/ tools developed in previous projects). Github is a platform built to allow collaboration on projects, but its ethos is grounded on the idea that users share their work and their experience. In this work, transparency about collaborative work (and the problems which arise) is key to moving forward. In this class we will talk about the issues of engaging in larger scale DH projects (i.e. more than one or two people) and will ask students to work some more with Github.
W. Caleb McDaniel, "Open Notebook History" http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/open-notebook-history.html
Robert McMillan, "The Meta-Story: How Wired Published its Github Story on Github" (02.24.12) https://www.wired.com/2012/02/github-revisited/. Also a few more Wired articles on Github: https://www.wired.com/2017/06/diversity-open-source-even-worse-tech-overall/ and https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-github-code-moderation/.
Kris Shaffer, "Push, Pull, Fork: GitHub for Academics" Hybrid Pedagogy (May, 2013)
Alexey Zagalsky, Joseph Feliciano, Margaret-Anne Storey, Yiyun Zhao, Weiliang Wang, "The Emergence of GitHub as a Collaborative Platform for Education" Paper delivered at the 18th Annual Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.
Ian Milligan, "Why Canada's Open Data Initiative Matters to Historians," https://ianmilligan.ca/2014/01/27/why-canadas-open-data-initiative-matters-to-historians/ and https://ianmilligan.ca/2014/10/23/sshrcs-research-data-archiving-policy-and-historians/.
And try to make sense of what these githubs are doing:
Last minute addition for future reading (completely optional): https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/tag/github101. In particular: https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/fork-the-academy/48935
This week marks a transition in the class away from our brief introduction to some digital tools, towards a more in-depth understanding of medieval manuscripts and how they are put together. “Writing Supports” is the term used to describe the material on which text is written. Our discussion, therefore, is to understand what people write on (paper, parchment, stone, wax, banana leaves etc.) and how that affects how texts are constructed.
"Parchment," from the Book and Paper Group Wiki, authored by the Book and Paper Group of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.
Saenger, "Silent Reading and its impact on Late Medieval Reading" (on slack)
Shady Characters, "Miscellany № 73: per Churchill et commata"
"Why Europe’s Oldest Intact Book Was Found in a Saint’s Coffin," https://daily.jstor.org/why-europes-oldest-intact-book-was-found-in-a-saints-coffin/
Videos:
There are lots of videos online about paper and parchment making. Check out this one about Japanese paper making. The British Library's Medieval England and France, 700-1200 online exhibition has a number of high quality videos about the making of quills, ink, pigments, vellum and more.
Generally for a good introduction to manuscripts, read the themed articles of the Medieval England and France exhibit on "making manuscripts".
Digitized Examples:
St. Cuthbert's Gospel: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=add_ms_89000
Harley MS 3244, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_3244_f001v
Fragments of birch bark manuscript in Kharoṣṭi, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/gandharan-scrolls
Carbonized scroll from Herculaneum, introduction here http://emilyshauser.weebly.com/hocw100/hocw74-herculaneum-papyrus-phercparis-4-herculaneum-italy-1st-century-ce and imaging project discussed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep27227
Book of wax tablets, http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/1091
Sarah Bond has a blog post about teaching Classical Epigraphy (study of inscriptions). Read through her comments and look at the sketchfab examples she provides. https://sarahemilybond.com/2018/01/29/replacing-the-squeeze-teaching-classical-epigraphy-with-3d-models/
Paleography is the study of “old” ways of writing. Scripts go in and out of fashion, and thus how something is written allows us to date it with some certainty and often identify its origin. In this class, we will briefly explore the history of medieval Western European writing to get you thinking about distinctive features that help identify scripts of the folios we have in our collection.
Your starting point should be a blog post by Yvonne Seale (follow her on Twitter) entitled, "A Beginner’s Guide to Digital Palaeography of Medieval Manuscripts". It lists loads of good resources, including Enigma, self-described as intended for "Unpuzzling difficult Latin readings in medieval manuscripts" (i.e. gives you most likely potential readings from the letters you can read).
IMS, chp. 2-3, p. 18-48, chp. 10, 135-178.
Erik Kwakkel, "Biting, Kissing and the Treatment of Feet: The Transitional Script of the Long Twelfth Century," in Turning over a New Leaf __(Open Access book).
And codicologists in action: see how to collaborate in Lisa Fagin Davis blog post: https://manuscriptroadtrip.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/manuscript-road-trip-ege-and-phillipps-in-saskatchewan/ and accompanying twitter thread: https://twitter.com/lisafdavis/status/1045884565611515904
Daniel Wakelin, "Writing the Words," In The Production of Books in England 1350–1500 (available on slack).
Complete exercises here:
Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, "Paleography School". Start by reading their introduction to transcription and transcription principles and then the rest of the transcription "Basics" section. Then read the historical overviews of Gothic textualis, Gothic cursiva and Humanist scripts, which will be the main types you will encounter.
(optional, in French) Conseils en paléographie, https://paleo-en-ligne.fr/course/view.php?id=138
Reading medieval manuscripts is difficult for modern readers due to a complex use of abbreviations and codes (much like you yourself use).
IMS, chp. 6, p. 82-93.
Adriano Capelli's now quite old text on Abbreviations remains the reference work of record. Luckily it has been semi-translated, updated and made more accessible. Read the intro to Capelli laying out a theory of medieval abbreviation, translated into English here.
Use Capelli on a smart phone here (unfortunately the interface is only in French or German at this point). The searchable version for a browser on a computer is here. A digitized copy of the print version can be read on Archive.org.
On the Ad fontes website, attempt to transcribe this document written in Gothica textualis. Unlike your folio, if you click the "show transcription" box at the bottom of the page, whenever you hover the cursor over the word you are deciphering, it will show you the answer (I suggest this as a first stage to lessen the initial frustration of decipering and unpacking medieval writing).
Hypertext lexicon for Tironian notes by Martin Hellman
IMS, chp. 4 and 5 p. 49-81.
A gentle Introduction to Codicology by Dr James Freeman, Cambridge University Library.
Erik Kwakkel, "The Architecture of the Medieval Page," https://medievalbooks.nl/2018/09/07/the-architecture-of-the-medieval-page/
Sandra Hindman and Ariane Bergeron-Foote, Binding and the Archeology of the Medieval and Renaissance Book (available on slack).
Medieval & Early Modern Manuscripts Bookbinding Terms, Materials, Methods, And Models (available on slack).
To get a sense of how the printed page needs multiple orientations on a single side before being cut into folios, check out this blog post from the Firestone Library at Princeton. Recto side can be printed out, as can verso. Put the two together and you have a signature/ quire.
And try to understand the codicological description of Saint Cuthbert's Gospel (shelfmarkL "Add MS 89000"; i.e. the 89000 manuscript added to the general collection after its initial catalogue was created. It became part of the British Library collection only in 2012):
look at the catalogue here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_89000
look at the manuscript here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_89000_fs001r
Alternate catalogue description: https://elmss.nuigalway.ie/catalogue/222
Search for other manuscripts at the British Library here: https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/searchMSNo.asp
IMS, chp. 11-13; pp. 181-221.
Barbara Swanson, Jennifer Bain, and Debra Lacoste, Quick Guide to Manuscripts (Antiphonals) and Liturgy (supporting documentation for Cantus Manuscript Database) 2014.
Read a description of what the Cantus database seeks to do. Debra LaCoste, "The Cantus Database: Mining for Medieval Chant Traditions" https://journal.digitalmedievalist.org/articles/10.16995/dm.42/
Using liturgical features to localize text: posted by Lisa Fagin Davis, https://twitter.com/lisafdavis/status/1052611674925092864 linking to this document https://drive.google.com/file/d/146PzN6vpjuI7qbRGbc4gWRnofw-D4esc/view
Gentle introduction to medieval liturgical books and liturgy from Thomas Kelly's EdX course:
Thomas Kelly, Books in the Medieval Liturgy (Online EdX course - videos total about one hour)
Introduction to the Medieval Liturgy https://youtu.be/DGaHl2_NdmU
The Early Meaning of the Word Liturgyhttps://youtu.be/A7loXd-ou8M
The Proper of the Saintshttps://youtu.be/he8ebn8V7_4
Liturgical Space https://youtu.be/x42jnBl10v8
The Sacramentary https://youtu.be/WDbBzFQkNCA
The Epistle https://youtu.be/6UJhHuLNcmo
The Gospel https://youtu.be/kiKaax-m6H0
The Gradual https://youtu.be/HYHK6Btn9xw
The Missel - part 1 https://youtu.be/xTX5qk8lKAU
The Missel - part 2 https://youtu.be/C1Qa8oKwkhk
The Noyon Missal https://youtu.be/6VnxQxv36W4
Discussing The Daily Office https://youtu.be/g5MtxWjFsJA
Lectionary and Sermons https://youtu.be/flla7vLzWRQ
Collectar and Hymnary https://youtu.be/cWS3ESI-6rI
The Psalter https://youtu.be/g8Q8bqkAg4Q
The Antiphoner - part I https://youtu.be/uC929LPaov4
The Antiphoner - part II https://youtu.be/Fi6S296Agqk
The Antiphoner - part III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQV5WDdVraY
The Breviary - part I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltpRSZFt_gI
The Breviary - part II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYb8JshzJF0
Musical Notation - part I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDvE4o8Jfbo
Musical Notation - part II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKV7LKGF5uw
Musical Notation - part III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCoegiuyvtk
Introduction to Performing the Liturgy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxYNUTZw9to
Performing the Liturgy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOzzu84d-Eg
Thomas Kelly, Identifying medieval liturgical manuscripts: A rough guide (On slack and available here: https://prod-edxapp.edx-cdn.org/assets/courseware/v1/e1787c0f5b6e125b54e968f5ccadab63/asset-v1:HarvardX+HUM1.9x+3T2015+type@asset+block/Identifying_medieval_liturgical.pdf
For reference:
Andrew Hughes, Late Medieval Liturgical Offices: Resources for Electronic Research, (Toronto: PIMS, 1996).
Andrew Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office. A Guide to their Organization and Terminology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982).
A key reference work is the Descriptive Cataloging of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Manuscripts, by Gregory A. Pass put together for the Bibliographic Standards Committee: Rare Books and Manuscripts Section.
IMS, chps 8 and 9; pp. 117-134.
Jeffrey Pomerantz, "Introduction," Metadata (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015): p. 1-18 (on slack)
Shailor - Introduction and Principles of Cataloguing Medieval Manuscripts (on slack)
A Handlist of Manuscripts in the Schoenberg Collection (UPenn)
Eric Johnson and Scott Gwara. "The Butcher’s Bill”: Using the Schoenberg Database to Reverse-Engineer Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Books from Constituent Fragments
The Schoenberg Database can be consulted online here.
Take a quick look at Ottawa in Conway and Fagin-Davis, Directory of Collections in the United States and Canada with Pre-1600 Manuscript Holdings (on slack);
The Conway and Fagin-Davis work is a supplement to the DeRicci census – an excellent description of whose process of development is described in Nigel Ramsay's article "Towards a Universal Catalogue of Early Manuscripts: Seymour de Ricci’s Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada." In Manuscript Studies 1.1.
Digitized Manuscript Project (with well developed prose description)
Look at the Codex Gigas itself, but pay more attention to the codicological description offered (palaeography, illustration....). Start here: http://www.kb.se/codex-gigas/eng/short/
Working with Fragments:
Scott Gwara, Otto Ege's Manuscripts (on slack)
Lost Manuscripts: pilot project to build catalogue for fragments. About, Terminology, Sample Fragment
Fragmentarium: another pilot project. Case Studies, Timeline
First issue of the Fragmentarium journal. Read one article to see how scholars use fragments as part of a larger historical question.
No readings. During class time, students can meet with the professor one-on-one to get help with their final project.
No readings. Debriefing the term/ teleconference with Tuija Ainonen, of the British Library.
What is the difference between a manuscript and a digital version of it? This class welcomes students back and begins our focus on digitization in earnest. Our first question should be, what makes a digital project, digital? When we turn a manuscript into 1's and 0's, what do we do to it? What do we gain, or lose?
Jon Bath, Alyssa Arbuckle, Constance Crompton, Alex Christie, Ray Siemens, and the INKE Research Group, "Futures of the Book," in Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities, 336-344 (on slack)
David McKitterick, Old Books, New Technologies The Representation, Conservation and Transformation of Books since 1700, chp. 1, "The past in pixels", p. 1-26 (on slack).
Ted Underwood, "Seven ways humanists are using computers to understand texts," Blog post 2015, https://tedunderwood.com/2015/06/04/seven-ways-humanists-are-using-computers-to-understand-text/
Patrick Sahle, “What is a Scholarly Digital Edition?” in Digital Scholarly Editing: Theories and Practices - Open Book Publishers,” accessed December 30, 2018, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0095 (on slack)
Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen, "A Picture of a Picture of a Flower: On the Limitation of Working with Digitized Images", Blog Entry (November 25, 2018) http://jessieweihsuanchen.com/a-picture-of-a-picture-of-a-flower-on-the-limitation-of-working-with-digitized-images/
Example of a well-funded and successful digitization effort (links are to both sites of the same project). This project will be object of continuing discussion this term.
France and England Project: the Medieval Manuscripts between 700 and 1200 (the manuscripts)
Medieval England and France, 700–1200 (the exhibitions)
Scanning or photographing manuscripts is one thing, but manuscripts can be represented or reproduced digitally in a myriad of ways. This class is intended as a brainstorming session for potential exhibitions people might want to develop and to explore the idea of the digital humanities as a gateway into diverse intellectual and creative interactions with texts. Our goal in class is to come up with a set of criteria of what makes for good DH project, related of course, to medieval manuscript studies...
Think pieces:
Evyn C. Kropf, "Will that Surrogate Do?: Reflections on Material Manuscript Literacy in the Digital Environment from Islamic Manuscripts at the University of Michigan Library" In Manuscript Studies 1.1
Andrew Prescott, Lorna Hughes, "Why do we Digitize?" http://www.archivejournal.net/essays/why-do-we-digitize-the-case-for-slow-digitization/
Appleford, Simon, and Jennifer Guiliano. “Best Practice Principles Of Designing Your First Project.” DevDH.org, 2013. (recorded talk with powerpoint) http://devdh.org/lectures/design/bestpractice/
Study the NISO (National Information Standards Organization) recommendations for developing digital projects: https://www.niso.org/sites/default/files/2017-08/framework3.pdf
Databases
Medieval Digital Resources curated by the Medieval Academy of America.
A searchable database of current digital projects
Case studies:
Project to digitize palaeographical analysis. https://www.manuscript-cultures.uni-hamburg.de/hat_e.html
Sketchfab 3D models, repository, Musée de Cluny (Museum of the Middle Ages).
How to capture medieval manuscripts? This class asks students to consider how people go about imaging, reproducing and creating facsimiles (both physical and digital) of medieval manuscripts.
The Department of Canadian Heritage has developed a number tutorials and sets of guidelines to help Canadian heritage institutions with the process of digitization.
Please take a look at the Digital Imaging guide to understand imaging terminology.
but spend most of your time and focus on completing the Capture Your Collection: Small Museum Tutorial. Keep in mind that images of all the folios have been photographed, and are already available through a IIIF server online. The exercises are useful tools for your to reflect on the process outlined, but not necessary to complete for our purpose.
For more narrative/visual depictions of the digitization process, please see the following:
Short article on digitization at UPenn (video not available in Canada! ARGHHH!)
A "video orientation" to Penn Library's MS Codex 236
An interview with Christina Duffy (British Library) on multispectral imaging
Short TedTalk about the Multi-spectral imaging "Lazarus Project"
View automatic digitization at the University of Tokyo.
Photos of Digitization rig at Uni Heidelberg
A short "un-digitization" video at the Walters Art Museum.
Photos of digitizing Big Items at the British Library
Quick overview of image file types here.
(Optional) The debate about image standards continues. Here is one detailed study evaluating using RAW image files as an archival standard. Michael Bennett and Barry Wheeler, "Raw as Archival Still Image Format: A Consideration"
On Omeka, we’ve already been using IIIF Images. This class we will look at how we can use IIIF to present images, but also how IIIF and its linked software allows scholars to productively study/ interact with medieval manuscripts.
What is IIIF and how uses it?
Check out their github (also here) and see participating institutional members of the IIIF Community (i.e. what libraries and museums use IIIF)
For an introduction to IIIF, see their training manual. Read this introductory section. Reads parts 2.2-2.4, so that you understand the difference between an Image API and a Presentation API. This is a 5-day training session - feel free to make your way through the, at times, very detailed exercises, but know we will only be asking you to interact with images, not figure out how to present and serve them...
Poster: Lisa McAuley, “Benefits of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) Featuring Medieval Palimpsest Manuscripts,” Digital Initiatives Symposium, May 2, 2017, https://digital.sandiego.edu/symposium/2017/2017/34 which draws on work being done for http://www.sinaipalimpsests.org/
Reviews
Sarah Ann Long, “Review: International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF); Gallica; e-Codices: Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 71, no. 2 (August 1, 2018): 561–72, https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2018.71.2.561.
Examples of IIIF Implementation
Bibliotheca Vaticana (still in development, announced and explained here with preliminary scaffolding of the future website)
Using IIIF with Biblissima (these are slides to accompany a talk about the project)
Demo search site for IIIF images via Biblisimma
The development of annotations offered by Hypothes.is and Mirador allows an intellectual engagement/ process not usually visible, but very helpful in the creation of knowledge. Too many annotations or unhelpful annotations, however, have the potential to negatively impact a project. We will explore the questions of how to encourage productive collaboration and how much access you want to make to the general public for your online material.
Using IIIF Annotations and Crowdsourcing. British Library Digital Scholarship Blog
What are the best practices for creating online exhibitions of archival/ medieval material? How does the digital environment offer new ways of exhibiting material? What are the strengths and weaknesses of online exhibits?
In this class we will be looking at the guidelines for encoding medieval manuscripts developed by the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). Shawn Hawkins (College of the Humanities) will be coming to talk to us about his ongoing collaboration to develop a digital edition of a fifteenth-century commentary on the Roman poet Catullus.
Andrew Dunning (UofToronto) has put together a brief post about how to author digital critical editions, including LaTex, Classical Text Editor and TEI.
To work with TEI, he also has written out a useful starting guide, including who to install Atom on your computer (which you have already).
For a sense of what TEI is about take a look at Lou Burnard's short Open Edition What is the Text Encoding Initiative: How to add intelligent markup to digital resources . All in, this text runs to 114 pages, so read from the "Introduction" until the end of "Varieties of textual structure". Please read the whole thing if you get intrigued.
For a medieval specific TEI guidelines, please take a look at the Digital Latin Library's Guidelines Webpage or as a repository on Github.
In class and for homework, you will begin your first TEI edition by following this DLL training session.
In this class, we will consider how to foreground accessibility in developing online exhibitions. Also we will be considering the issue of dead sites – what happens to your site after you stop maintaining it and how to ensure the information you have work so hard on does not disappear into the ether…
Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop, "TRAVERSALS: A Method of Preservation for Born-Digital Texts," in Routledge Companion to Media Studies and the Digital Humanities, 351-361.
Elizabeth Ellcessor, "A Glitch in the Tower: Academia, Disability, and Digital Humanities" in Routledge Companion to Media Studies and the Digital Humanities
Creative Commons vs. GNU Information Licence: Read selection from Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman, Second Edition: http://www.gnu.org/doc/fsfs-ii-2.pdf
Last ditch conservation strategy: for physical items
No readings. During class time for these two weeks, students will meet with the professor one-on-one to get help with their final project.
No readings. During class time for these two weeks, students will meet with the professor one-on-one to get help with their final project.
No readings. During class time for these two weeks, students will meet make formal 20 minute presentations of their work to the class.
No readings. During class time for these two weeks, students will meet make formal 20 minute presentations of their work to the class.
No readings. Debriefing the term.