View
228
Download
0
Category
Tags:
Preview:
Citation preview
Creating textual resources
Manuscripts
Content of this session
Types and characteristics of manuscripts and artefacts
Methods of capture
We are dealing here with materials that need special handling … may include some printed materials such as incunabula
Types of manuscripts
Huge rangeSeveral centuries BC to the present day2500 years of materialsWritten on many different materials
papyrus, animal skins, lead tablets, stone, paper, etc
Many different languagesfont/script issues
MusicImages
Characteristics of manuscripts
Uniqueeven if there are many copies, they will all be different
May be fragileMay have bindingsWill need special handlingWill need specialist equipment
What do you want from mss?
Capture once for all time?Complete record?
Coversbindingsblank pagesglosseserasurespalimpsests
What do you want from mss?
Complete colour fidelity?Enhancements at capture stage?
UVRecord of minute details?
What is ‘significant’?E’g. with parchment, do you want to see the pore marks?
DIAMM Mss
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
Herbal Ms, Bodley 130
19 C. ‘squeeze’ of a Greek 19 C. ‘squeeze’ of a Greek inscriptioninscription
Roman lead writing tablets
Capture methods
Direct digital capture
high end digital cameras delivering >= 144M pixels
for the best quality scans from large, rare or damaged originals
digital SLRs delivering 14M pixelsfor high quality images from smaller originals
SLR or compact cameras delivering 5-8M pixels
may give good results if used properly
Capture methods
Photography
large format slides (10x8) scanned on drum scanners will give excellent results
there will also be a preservation surrogate
Surrogates may already exist
so scanning these may be a quick way to get started
Prints, slides, negatives can all be scanned
Handling
Every single interaction with a fragile original can compromise it
Many of these may be hundreds or even thousands of years old …
… we want them to last for hundreds more years
So special handling is crucial
Handling
Conservation practice in human handling
Special stands and cradles
Light levels
Dust-free environment
Heat, cold, humidity controlled
example from Celtic mss at Oxford project
Metadata
Manuscripts will need a number of different levels of metadata besides the structural and administrative metadata described earlier
Codex:
institution, collection level description, manuscript, folios, images, transcription, etc
Archive collection (e.g. personal papers)
classic archive descriptions/EAD
Much of this may already exist
Metadata
Visual images are very difficult to create intellectual metadata for
Describing or categorizing images in words is difficult
Can use full text descriptions
Or thesauri or classification systems
Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), Visual Resources Association (VRA), ICONCLASS
Case study: Bank’s Correspondence
Sir Joseph Banks 1743-1820
Naturalist with a particular interest in Australia
Papers available in the National Library of Australia
Presented by the NLA as part of their archives collections
Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aids and digital
Recommended