CLiP 2006
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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:
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: