The document proposes a "Canvas paradigm" to represent manuscript pages using annotations across different repositories. It allows bringing together images, text, and commentary without all being in one place. Initial experiments had students use tools like T-PEN and DM to transcribe and annotate pages from BNF hosted on Stanford servers. Next steps include extracting and sharing student work in new displays and projects.

1. The Ideal Page:
Between Digital
Facsimile and
Medieval Manuscript
Benjamin Albritton, Stanford University Libraries
Robert Sanderson, Los Alamos National Laboratory
2012 Medieval Academy of America Meeting
Saint Louis, MO

2. Overview
• Background
• Framing Questions
• Working with Digital Surrogates
• Supporting a world of linked medieval
knowledge
• Initial Experiments and Next Steps

3. Framing Questions
• What do we study, as medievalists?
• What is a manuscript?
• What purposes does a digital surrogate serve?
• What can we do with traditionally tacit
information? (transcriptions, annotations,
etc.)

4. Working with Surrogates

5. Naïve Approach: Transcribe Images
Directly

6. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR

7. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open

8. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open

9. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open f. iiiV

10. Canvas Paradigm
• A Canvas is an empty space in which to build up a display
• Brings non-collocated information into a single viewing space
• Makes explicit that the image is a surrogate

11. Domain Requirements
Working at physical item level
provides unique challenges!
1. Only parts of pages may be
digitized
• Only illuminations digitized
• Fragments of pages
• Multiple fragments per image
Cod. Sang. 1394: 10.5076/e-codices-csg-1394

12. Domain Requirements
2. Page may not be digitized at all
• Not "interesting" enough This page intentionally,
but unfortunately,
• Digitization destructive
left blank
• Page no longer exists
• Page only hypothetical

13. Domain Requirements
3. Non-rectangular pages
• Fashionable heart shaped
manuscripts
• Fragments
• Pages with foldouts
Facsimile of BNF Rothschild 2973
http://www.omifacsimiles.com/brochures/montchen.html

14. Domain Requirements
4. Alignment of multiple
images of same object
• Multi-spectral imaging
• Multiple resolutions
• Image tiling
• Microfilm vs photograph
• Multiple digitizations
Archimedes Palimpsest Multi-Spectral Images
http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/

15. Domain Requirements
5. Multiple page orders over time
• Rebinding
• Scholarly disagreement on
reconstruction
6. Different pages of the manuscript
held by different institutions
Cod Sang 730: 10.5706/e-codices-csg-0730a

16. Domain Requirements
7. Transcription of:
• Text
• Music
• Musical Notation
• Performance
• Diagrams
Reusing existing resources, such as
TEI, where possible
8. Transcriptions both created and
stored in a distributed way, with
competing versions
Parker: XXX XXX

17. Canvas Paradigm
A Canvas is an empty space in which to build up a display
• HTML5, SVG, PDF, … even Powerpoint!
• Can "paint" many different resources, including text, images and audio,
on to a Canvas
We can use a Canvas to represent a folio of a manuscript.
Distributed nature is fundamental in the requirements
• Painting resources, commentary and collaboration
• Idea: Use Annotations to do all of those
• Annotations can target the Canvas instead of individual Images

18. Canvas to Page Relationship
The Canvas's top left and bottom right corners correspond to the corners of
a rectangular box around the folio

19. OAC Annotations to Paint Images

20. OAC Annotations to Paint Text

21. Transcription: Morgan 804

22. Transcription: Morgan 804

23. Fragments: Cod Sang 1394

24. Musical Manuscripts: Parker XXX

25. Missing Pages: Parker CCC 286

26. Repeated Zones: Frauenfeld Y
112

27. Rebinding: BNF f.fr. 113-116

28. Supporting a World of Linked
Medieval Knowledge
Those Annotations could be anywhere on the web!
• Need to be able to discover them!
Publish / Subscribe Model for Dissemination.
• Annotation creators publish annotations as linked data
• Annotation consumers harvest from (trusted?) projects, aggregators or
authors
• Sync across repositories for sustainability
Anticipated Issues:
• Unreliable authors (or spam)
• Multiple published versions
• Humanist trend to not expose working data

29. Teaching with Distributed Digital Tools
and Surrogates (UVa, Spring 2012)
• Deborah McGrady, UVa: FREN 5150/8510: Textual Bodies:
The Making of Books, Authors and Readers in the Middle
Ages
• 12-15 graduate students
• Use of:
• Images from the Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Hosted at Stanford University
• Transcription tool: T-PEN (Saint Louis University)
• Annotation tool: DM (Drew University)

30. Using DM to create and manage
annotations

31. A Space for Simple Description

32. Working Across Tools

33. Transcriptions in T-PEN

34. DM for discovery and display

35. Next Steps for Student Materials
• Extract annotations and transcriptions from tools for:
• New display
• “Digital appendices” to traditional publication
• Personal note stores
• New projects
• New questions

36. Summary
Model:
Canvas paradigm provides a coherent solution to modeling the layout of
medieval manuscripts
• Annotations, and Collaboration, at the heart of the model
Implementation:
• Distribution across repositories for images, text, commentary
• Consistent methods to access content from many repositories
• Encourages tool development by experts in the field
The SharedCanvas model implemented by distributed repositories brings the
humanist's primary research objects to their desktop in a powerful, extensible
and interoperable fashion

37. Software, Tools, and Initiatives
Mentioned
• Project Blacklight (discovery front-end)
– http://projectblacklight.org/
• International Image Interoperability Framework (Image API)
– http://lib.stanford.edu/iiif
• Open Annotation (Annotation Data Model)
– http://openannotation.org
• SharedCanvas (Aggregated Facsimile Data Model)
– http://www.shared-canvas.org
• T-PEN (Transcription tool – Saint Louis University)
– http://t-pen.org/TPEN
• DM (General annotation desktop – Drew University)
– http://ada.drew.edu/dmproject/

38. Thank You
Benjamin Albritton
blalbrit@stanford.edu
@bla222
Robert Sanderson
rsanderson@lanl.gov
azaroth42@gmail.com
@azaroth42
Web: http://lib.stanford.edu/dmm
http://www.shared-canvas.org/
Paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2925
Acknowledgements
DMSTech Group: http://dmstech.group.stanford.edu/
Open Annotation Collaboration: http://www.openannotation.org/