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