As computers are good with numbers accounting was certainly one of the earliest applications of busisness automation with the computer and the earliest applications of computer technology in the field of history was focused on statistical applications in social and economic history. It is therefore astonishing that there are only very few digital editions of account books with offer numerical manipulation of the data. The paper argues that the philological tradition of editing in the predigital times has influenced the practice of digital editing. Only recently the theoretical discussion on digital edition has stressed that digital representation can include multiple information layers. In the major comunity of encoding historical sources, the Text Encoding Initiative a discussion on how to represent account books has started only recently too. The paper will present a proposal how to model digital editions of accounting like historical sources and will try to show what kind of benefits historians and philologists could acquire by this method.

1. Why not edit medieval account
books digitally?
Georg Vogeler
<georg.vogeler@uni-graz.at>
http://www.i-d-e.de http://informationsmodellierung.uni-graz.at
International Conference: Financial Aspects of Medieval Economy – 17.-19-10.2013, Prague

2. Printed edition
e.g. Claudine Moulin,
Michel Pauly: Die
Rechnungsbücher der
Stadt Luxemburg, 2006ff.
"Detailed documentation
of the original text"

3. Accounts are tables
BayHStA KL Freising 69, ed. Bizjak 2005, S. 1
Printed editions
R. Knipping: Kölner Stadtrechnungen 1897/8

4. Digital edition?

5. Digital edition?
<http:www.caste
llanie.net>

6. Digital editing
… isn't restricted to one interpretation:
It can represent the account book
• visually
• its language
• its content
• its process of production
in one resource

7. Styrian Marchfutterurbar 1414/1426
ed. v. Matthias Perstling
< http://hfi.uni-graz.at/mfu/>

8. Multiple layers of inscription

9. Medieval Accountbooks of the Teutonic
Order around 1400
ed. by Jürgen Sarnowsky, Christina Link et al.
<http://www.schuredo.uni-hamburg.de/content/below/index.xml>

10. Content

11. Compte de Girard
de Grandmont,
châtelain de Bâgé,
3.11.1345
Ed. by Marjorie Burghardt
http://burghart.online.fr/xml/

12. Fontes Civitatis
Ratisponensis:
StadtA Regensburg
Cameralia 3
By Heidrun Boshof
<http://www.fcr-online.com>
Edition with
• Transcription
• Images
• Structural representation

13. „calculation oriented" edition
The Alcalá
account book:
Royal Irish
college of Saint
George the
Martyr
(1649-1785)
<http://archives.forasfeasa.ie/>

14. Why calculation oriented digital edition isn't
standard?
1. Digital scholarly editing was first studies as a
solution for complex textual tradition.
2. Scholarly editing is considered primarily as a
philologic task.
3. The de-facto-standard (i.e. the guidelines of
the TEI) has drawbacks if to be used for
account books.

15. Edition and proto-edition
Comédie-Française Register Project <http://mit.edu/hyperstudio/cfr/>

16. "De-facto standard" TEI:
• TEI (Text Encoding Initiative)
Modules for
– transcription
– Critical apparatus
– Text-image-linking
• No model for accounts:
– Only tei:measure(@commodity, @unit, @value,
@type)
– no encoding of a transaction (involving persons, a
date, the object, the price and the final amount)

17. Alternative standards?
• OFX/IFX (Open Financial eXchange /
Interactive Financial eXchange,)
• ebXML (Electronic Business XML)
• XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting
Language) with taxonomies
– E.g. XBRL Global Ledger

18. "bookkeeping"
• entry
– bk:entry [gl-cor:entryDetail]
– bk:amount(quantity, unit) [gl-cor:amount]
– bk:i/bk:d [gl-cor:signOfAmount]
– bk:account [gl-cor:account]
– bk:debitCredit [gl-cor:debitCreditCode]
• price
– bk:price(tei:measure[1], tei:measure[2])
• Transactions (Syd Baumann, Kathryn Tomasek)
– bk:transaction(bk:transfer(from, to, where, when, what)*)

19. Testing the model
• BayHStA
Staatsverwaltung 1378:
Account book of the
Vitztums of Straubing
Peter of Eck, 1335
(ed. Vogeler 1999)
http://gams.uni-graz.at/rem

20. Testing the modell
• Transcription in TEI
• Add an accounting taxonomy
• Script the conversion of text transcription into
stricter forms:
– In tabular form
– Calculating subsets
– Represent the data in RDF
– …
http://gams.uni-graz.at/rem

21. example
http://gams.uni-graz.at/rem

22. Text and calculation

23. Detailed transcription

24. Text selection

25. Spreadsheet

26. http://www.i-d-e.de http://informationsmodellierung.uni-graz.at
Why not editing medieval account
books digitally?
Yes, why not?
Let's create a tradition of digital edition of accounts
in which the computer can do what he can do best:
computare
Thanks for your attention!
Georg Vogeler
<georg.vogeler@uni-graz.at>

27. • Dieses Dokument unterliegt der Creative
Commons Lizenz
• Namensnennung - Weitergabe unter gleichen
Bedingungen 3.0 -Osterreich (CC BY-SA 3.0 AT)
• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
sa/3.0/at/