Cultural Objects in Digital Resources: Imagining the Text.
(Arianna Ciula)

Arianna Ciula

arianna.ciula@kcl.ac.uk

King's College London

London

United Kingdom

This paper proposes an evaluation of humanities computing resources based on their ability to represent texts. The discussion is based on the analysis of several projects – to the development of several of which the author has directly collaborated – different in nature, but all related to the representation of textual material connected to its visual or graphic ‘counterpart’.

It is well known that humanities scholars use images for their research in various formats and combinations. In particular, copies, illustrations, surrogates are used to observe and interpret the original cultural artefacts otherwise not directly available and/or not legitimately transformable. When historical texts – in the broad sense as understood by CLiP – are taken into account, the connection between the textual content and its physical object is particularly explicit. This is valid for philology or palaeography as well as for archaeology and art history. However, in the former case the text of interest generally refers to a support perceived as a two dimensional image. It is an extreme case of symbiosis between the text as a string of print/digital characters – already a first level of interpretation and mark-up in itself – and its extant materiality as a physical artefact (codex, roll, early print edition etc.) recalled by a two dimensional representation either analogical or digital.

Although humanities computing projects can be very different in methodologies and aims, within the digital resources created for supporting academic research it is possible to identify some categories relevant to the focus of this paper:

1. Digital resources which give priority to texts
   1. encoded texts
   2. visualisation of the textual encoding
2. Digital resources which give priority to images
   1. low resolution images of texts
   2. high resolution images of texts
   3. virtual restoration of images of texts
   4. annotation of images of texts
3. Digital resources which combine images and texts equally
   1. juxtaposition of independent sources (textual and graphic)
   2. cross-references and connection of linked sources (textual and graphic)

This categorisation is not exhaustive nor exclusive – indeed, different subcategories can vary a lot semantically and can co-occur in the same resource –, but it is appropriate for the evaluation which the paper aims to accomplish. Although point 1.a is not relevant here, it has been included so as to contextualise point 1.b. The visualisation of the encoding of a text is usually hidden from the main interface of whatever encoded textual material a digital resource provides. When the encoding is shown, a visualisation of the interpretative layers beneath the textual sequence is made available. What is visible is not the correspondent folio of a manuscript transcription for instance, but the components that the encoder or the editor has considered as structural parts of the text. This visualisation cannot be considered a graphic correspondent. It is rather a visual representation of some selected elements of which the user/scholar may already posses a mental image or, even more interestingly, a new and unusual visual representation of the text generated by the encoding process and open to further research.

Similarly, point 2.a is not relevant to the issues this paper deals with. However, a consistent amount of digital resources offer just low resolutions images for a combination of reasons that can range from financial restrictions to copyright permissions, from the aim of producing a cataloguing resource rather than an imaging resource to the lack of consideration for image-based analysis. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: the image of the text is subsidiary and can only be explored to a minimal extent. Points 2.b, c and d apply to all those cases in which the images are recognised as fundamental interfaces to the text they contain. Provided that the browsing resources are good enough, detailed observations of the material aspects of the image-pages can be carried out (given point 2.b). The editorial effort related to the images themselves is minimal, but the results can be very appealing for image-based research. Points 2.c and d require instead careful planning of imaging pre-processing and post-processing respectively, with no guarantee of the output results. When the operations of image processing and image mark-up are successful, the developers of the resource add their level of analysis to the graphical objects and make available a layer of interpretations which adds value to the resource by casting, at the same time, the representation of the primary source as such.

Point 3 represents the balanced combination of the previous categories and implies several complications both in terms of editorial process and fruition tools. Indeed, if so far the analysis has not mentioned the dynamic aspects of a digital resource, the active role of the user/reader as editor/developer is emerging more and more in relation to this type of resources (especially point 3.b).

To conclude, the objectives of the paper are to analyse the digital resources of historical textual materials under a perspective where:

• the encoded text, when made visible in all its stratification, is considered itself a visual counterpart of the “normal” text;
• the representation of the physical materiality of the text – often plural because witnessed in many occurrences, especially in the case of classic and medieval traditions – is evaluated in different grades on the basis of the implications for image-based research.

References

• Archimedes Project. <http://archimedes2.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/archimedes_templates/> (December 2005)
• Brown, Michael S. and W. Brent Seales. 2001. 'The Digital Atheneum: New Approaches for Preserving, Restoring and Analyzing Damaged Manuscripts' . ACM: 437-443.
• Bunke, Horst, and A. Lawrence Spitz, eds. 2006. 'Document Analysis Systems VII' . Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3872.
• Burnley, David and Alison Wiggins, eds. 2003. The Auchinleck Manuscript. <http://www.nls.uk/auchinleck/> (December 2005)
• Buzzetti, Dino. Forthcoming. 'Biblioteche digitali e oggetti digitali complessi: Esaustività e funzionalità nella conservazione' . In Atti del Workshop ErpaNET Trusted Repositories for Preserving Cultural Heritage (Roma, Accademia dei Lincei, 17-19 November 2003).
• Coombs, James, and Allen H. Reaner, Steven J. De Rose. 1987. 'Markup Systems and the Future of Scholarly Text Processing' , Communications of the ACM 30: 933-47.
• Codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis (CEEC). <http://www.ceec.uni-koeln.de/>
• Dekhtyar, Alex, and Ionut E. Iacob, Jerzy W. Jaromczyk, et al. 2006. 'Multihierarchical XML Markup of Image-based Electronic Editions' . International Journal on Digital Libraries (IJDL) 6.1: 55-69. <http://dblab.csr.uky.edu/~eiaco0/publications/JDL2004.pdf> (April 2006)
• Duggan, Hoyt N. gen. ed. The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive. <http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/seenet/piers/> (December 2005)
• Guyotjeannin, Olivier, and Gautier Poupeau. Le Cartulaire blanc de Saint-Denis. <http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/cartulaireblanc/> (December 2005)
• Harvard Law School Library. 2003. Bracton Online: Bracton: De Legibus Et Consuetudinibus Angliæ. <http://hlsl.law.harvard.edu/bracton/> (December 2005)
• Henry III Fine Rolls Project. 2005-2008. <http://www.frh3.org.uk/> (April 2006)
• Institute for New Testament Textual Research of University of Münster. 2003-2005. Digital Nestle-Aland Prototype. <http://nestlealand.uni-muenster.de/> (December 2005)
• Irish Script on Screen. <http://www.isos.dias.ie/> (December 2005)
• Kiernan, Kevin, ed. 2002-2006. Electronic Boethius. <http://beowulf.engl.uky.edu/~kiernan/eBoethius/inlad.htm> (April 2006)
• Kiernan, Kevin, Alex Dekhtyar, Jerzy W. Jaromczyk, et al. 2004. 'Edition Production Technology (EPT) and the ARCHway Project' . DigiCULT Newsletter. <http://dblab.csr.uky.edu/~eiaco0/publications/DigiCULT04.html> (December 2005)
• McGann, J. J. 2001. Radiant Textuality: Literature after the world wide web. Palgrave: New York.
• Online Chopin Variorum Edition Pilot Project. 2003-2004. <http://www.ocve.org.uk> (December 2005)
• Scholarly Digital Editions. <http://www.sd-editions.com/> (December 2005)
• Sperberg-McQueen, C. M. 1991. 'Text in the Electronic Age: Textual Study and Text Encoding with Examples From Medieval Text' . Literary and Linguistic Computing 6.1: 32-46.