The document discusses the current state of medieval manuscript digitization projects, which exist largely in silos without interoperability. It proposes moving toward a "digital manuscript commons" by aggregating distributed resources and using common data models and APIs to make them interoperable and extensible. This would allow manuscripts and related materials held in different repositories to be discovered, analyzed and used together through shared tools. The goal is sustainability through collaboration rather than separate "curated and comprehensive" projects.

1. DIGITAL MEDIEVAL
MANUSCRIPTS
A Use-Case for an Interoperable Digital Library
Infrastructure
Benjamin Albritton
Stanford University Libraries
blalbrit@stanford.edu
@bla222

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

3. Background
Andrew 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

4. 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

5. Current State: A World of Silos
DIAMM Parker on the Web e-codices And so on…

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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)

19. 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)

20. 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)

21. 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)

22. 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)

23. 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)

24. 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)

25. Working with Surrogates

26. Uses of Manuscript Facsimiles
Parker Library, CCCC 61
(fol. 1v)

27. Manuscript Information
Parker Library, CCCC 61
(fol. 1v)

28. 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

29. 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

30. 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

31. 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

32. 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

33. Repository to Repository Interactions
Parker: CCCC 410 – De speculatione musice
• 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?
CHMTL: 1970, Corpus scriptorum
text of De speculatione musice

34. 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?

35. Toward a Digital Manuscript Commons
The Problem:
• Medieval projects as “curated and comprehensive” efforts
• Technical and social silos
• Expensive to maintain
• Difficult to extend

36. 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

37. Designing Modular Repositories and Tools
Image Image
Transcription Annotation Discovery Tool X?
Analysis Viewer
Image Viewer Discovery
Metadata (Canonical)
Image Data (Canonical)

38. 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

39. CHMTL text + Parker image in T-PEN

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

41. … or overlaid

42. Examples of other resources attached to
the facsimile
• User-generated
comments (public
and private)
• Audio
performances of
notated music
• Overlaid text
transcription
• Also:
• Data sets
• Mark-up
• Base
image
choices

43. 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

44. 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