From Scriptorium to Collaboratory Raphael Lyne CRASSH, January 2009

Based at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge Funded by AHRC Resource Enhancement Award

Scriptorium Team Principal Investigator: Richard Beadle Co-Investigators: Colin Burrow, Raphael Lyne, Andrew Zurcher Research Associates: Christopher Burlinson (2006-8), Sebastiaan Verweij (2008-), Angus Vine (2008-) IT Developer: Mariko Brittain (2006-8) Advisory Board: Peter Beal (Institute of English Studies), Elizabeth Clarke (Warwick University), Ralph Hanna (Keble College, Oxford), Mark Nicholls (St John's College, Cambridge), Oliver Pickering (Brotherton Library, Leeds University), Bill Sherman (University of York), Barry Windeatt (Emmanuel College, Cambridge)

Scriptorium Contents 20 digital facsimiles of ‘miscellaneous’ manuscripts created between c and 1720 (e.g. commonplace books) from 10 partner libraries. ‘Interoperable’: TEI XML descriptions, Dublin Core metadata. Detailed descriptions, partial transcriptions, scholarly introductions. Online palaeography teaching tool (developing existing ‘English Handwriting: An Online Course’). Research resources for manuscript study (e.g. database of provenance images).

Aims at the Digital-Archival Interface Access (full access to the whole manuscript, Creative Commons licences) Competence (palaeography, introduction to manuscript study) Conservation (large image files stored at DSpace) Exploring Techniques Research (conference, collection) Community (lists etc.)

Paradoxes at the Digital-Archival Interface ‘Digital Facsimile’: aiming to recreate as much as possible of the material book in a context thought to be antithetical to the material book. William Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (2007) Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (1994)

Cambridge University Library, MS Add Miscellany, verse and prose, first owned by Lady Dorothy Browne (d. 1685), then passed to her daughter Elizabeth Lyttleton (d. after 1728). Challenge for digitisation: the book is written from both ends. The Scriptorium facsimile starts from one end, and then restarts from the other. ‘Thus our user will open the manuscript from one end, but read it from both ends. We believe that this decision allows us to replicate both how the original owners used the manuscript and the experience of a modern reader faced with it in the Manuscripts Reading Room of Cambridge University Library. We have, in effect, sought to replicate digitally the process of turning the manuscript physically, which any reader would need to do.’

Cambridge University Library, MS Ll.1.18 Late 15 th century miscellany of household information (recipes, prayers, etc.). The principal compiler (the MS is actually composed of five booklets) was probably a member of the religious community at Southwell, Notts. Challenge for Digitisation: (among others) page containing both mirror writing and code.

Cambridge University Library MS LL.1.18, fol. 81r

Mirror Writing Reversed Thanks To Modern Technology (and the code-cracking Scriptorium team) Be good master to thomas

From Scriptorium to Collaboratory Sustainability (interoperability; anti-obsolescence) Expandability (interoperability; protocols; intellectual structure; merging projects) Collaborative Research (further manuscripts; further scholarly resources; interaction) Digital Culture / Electronic Text (points of friction between digital archives and e.g. Jerome McGann’s ‘Radiant Textuality’; exploiting the newly circulating resource; Not Being Too Antiquarian) Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.7.31 King Edward VI’s Biblical Miscellany