Creating textual resources Manuscripts

Content of this session Types and characteristics of manuscripts and artefacts Methods of capture We are dealing here with materials that need special handling … may include some printed materials such as incunabula

Types of manuscripts Huge range Several centuries BC to the present day 2500 years of materials Written on many different materials papyrus, animal skins, lead tablets, stone, paper, etc Many different languages font/script issues Music Images

Characteristics of manuscripts Unique even if there are many copies, they will all be different May be fragile May have bindings Will need special handling Will need specialist equipment

What do you want from mss? Capture once for all time? Complete record? Covers bindings blank pages glosses erasures palimpsests

What do you want from mss? Complete colour fidelity? Enhancements at capture stage? UV Record of minute details? What is significant? Eg. with parchment, do you want to see the pore marks?

DIAMM Mss

Bedes Ecclesiastical History

Herbal Ms, Bodley 130

19 C. squeeze of a Greek inscription

Roman lead writing tablets

Capture methods Direct digital capture high end digital cameras delivering >= 144M pixels for the best quality scans from large, rare or damaged originals digital SLRs delivering 14M pixels for high quality images from smaller originals SLR or compact cameras delivering 5-8M pixels may give good results if used properly

Capture methods Photography large format slides (10x8) scanned on drum scanners will give excellent results there will also be a preservation surrogate Surrogates may already exist so scanning these may be a quick way to get started Prints, slides, negatives can all be scanned

Handling Every single interaction with a fragile original can compromise it Many of these may be hundreds or even thousands of years old … … we want them to last for hundreds more years So special handling is crucial

Handling Conservation practice in human handling Special stands and cradles Light levels Dust-free environment Heat, cold, humidity controlled example from Celtic mss at Oxford project

Metadata Manuscripts will need a number of different levels of metadata besides the structural and administrative metadata described earlier Codex: institution, collection level description, manuscript, folios, images, transcription, etc Archive collection (e.g. personal papers) classic archive descriptions/EAD Much of this may already exist

Metadata Visual images are very difficult to create intellectual metadata for Describing or categorizing images in words is difficult Can use full text descriptions Or thesauri or classification systems Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), Visual Resources Association (VRA), ICONCLASS

Case study: Banks Correspondence Sir Joseph Banks Naturalist with a particular interest in Australia Papers available in the National Library of Australia Presented by the NLA as part of their archives collections Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aids and digital