Presentation: Medieval Song Network September 2011 (Senate House, London)

1. Medieval Song on the Web
Image, Text, Media, and Annotation
Robert Sanderson
rsanderson@lanl.gov
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Benjamin Albritton
blalbrit@stanford.edu
Stanford University
http://lib.stanford.edu/dmm
http://www.shared-canvas.org/
This presentation arises from work that is
funded, in part, by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation
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2. Overview
• Medieval Song in the Digital Environment
• Annotation of web-based resources
• Motivation and light framework overview
• Use-cases and demos
• Possible next-steps for song projects wanting to use
digital tools and resources
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3. Describing Song
• How to adequately discuss a complex, compound entity?
• Text or texts
• Music (often multiple simultaneous voices)
• Performance
• Manuscript witnesses
• Mise-en-page and other issues of layout
• Variants
• Decorations
• The interactions and relationships between these
elements
• Beyond the individual scholar
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4. From Analog to Digital
Narrative Argument
Transcribed
Example
Analytical
Reduction
Explanatory
Annotation
Describing Example
Jennifer Bain, “Theorizing the Cadence in the Music of Machaut,”
Journal of Music Theory 47/2 (2003), 334-35
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5. Using and Presenting Digital Facsimiles
Some Requirements:
• Gather information from various sources
• Multiple layers of commentary
• Ability to provide context for examples
• Include all of the data that supports the argument
• Allow feedback
• Include many types of media
• Possibility of non-linearity
• Permanence
• And… ?
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6. Motivating Questions
Many implicit assumptions:
• What is a Manuscript?
• What is its relation to a facsimile?
• What is the relation of a transcription
of a facsimile to the original object?
What does this mean for digital tools?
• How do we rethink digital facsimiles in a
shared, distributed, global space?
• How do we enable collaboration and
encourage engagement?
Ms MurF: 10.5076/e-codices-kba-0003
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7. Vision
A collaborative future:
• Rich landscape of interconnected
repositories of images, texts, media
• Seamless user interfaces disconnected
from the repositories
• Improve efficiency and usability through
open, shared development
• Requirements:
• Shared data model
• Shared services for facsimiles and
scholarly data
BNF f.fr 113, folio 1 recto
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8. Naïve Approach: Transcribe Images Directly
But how to align multiple images, pages without images, fragments… ?!
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9. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR
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10. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open
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11. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open
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12. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open f. iiiV
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13. Canvas Paradigm
• A Canvas is an empty space in which to build up a display
• A SharedCanvas's top left and bottom right corners correspond to
the equivalent corners of a folio
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14. Technology: Open Annotation
• http://www.openannotation.org/
• Focus on interoperable sharing of annotations
• Web-centric and open, not locked down silos
• Create, consume and interact in different environments
• “Annotation”
• Scholarly commentary about the manuscript
• Painting resources on the SharedCanvas
• Hardest part: Define what an Annotation is!
• "Aboutness" is key to distinguish from general metadata
A document that describes how one resource is about
one or more other resources, or part thereof.
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15. Open Annotation Model
• Annotation (a document)
• Body (the ‘comment’ of the annotation)
• Target (the resource the Body is ‘about’)
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16. OAC Annotations to Paint Images
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17. OAC Annotations to Paint Text
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18. Transcription: Morgan 804
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19. Transcription: Morgan 804
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20. Demo 1: Layering Image and Text
• http://shared-canvas.org/impl/demo1
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21. Musical Manuscripts: Parker CCC 008
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22. Demo 2: Beyond Text (Music and Media)
• http://shared-canvas.org/impl/demo2
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23. Demo 3: Transcribing in the Digital Environment
• Work with interoperable repositories
• Use tools designed for the task:
• Transcription
• Annotation
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24. 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
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25. Conclusion: Next Steps
Project-centric Approach:
• Identify research goals
• Encourage interoperability
• Use existing tools or develop new modules in the interoperable
environment
• What is specific to song study?
• What is general?
• Build teams that include digital repositories, software developers, and
scholars
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26. Thank You
Robert Sanderson
rsanderson@lanl.gov
azaroth42@gmail.com
@azaroth42
Benjamin Albritton
blalbrit@stanford.edu
@bla222
Web: http://lib.stanford.edu/dmm
http://www.shared-canvas.org/
Paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2925
Slides: http://slidesha.re/oJnmGe
Acknowledgements
DMSTech Group: http://dmstech.group.stanford.edu/
Open Annotation Collaboration: http://www.openannotation.org/
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