Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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virtual documents. This level of personalization is extremely useful and rarely found among most
digital projects. Moreover, the ability to create virtual manuscripts that conta<strong>in</strong> page images of <strong>in</strong>terest
from various manuscripts will likely support <strong>in</strong>terest<strong>in</strong>g new research.
As <strong>in</strong>dicated by the projects surveyed here, a wealth of digital manuscript resources is available onl<strong>in</strong>e.
The next section looks at some of the challenges of work<strong>in</strong>g with complicated <strong>in</strong>dividual manuscripts.
Digital Challenges of Individual Manuscripts and Manuscript Collections
This review has already briefly explored some of the challenges of manuscript digitization <strong>in</strong> terms of
advanced document-recognition and research projects such as the work of EDUCE with the HMT
project and research conducted on the Archimedes Palimpsest.
This section exam<strong>in</strong>es another perspective, the challenges of creat<strong>in</strong>g metadata (e.g., l<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g
transcriptions, translations, and images) to manage highly complicated <strong>in</strong>dividual digital manuscripts
such as the Codex S<strong>in</strong>aiticus 395 and the Archimedes Palimpsest and for digital collections of the
multiple manuscripts of a s<strong>in</strong>gle work such as <strong>in</strong> the Roman de La Rose Digital Library (RRDL).
The Codex S<strong>in</strong>aiticus is one major project that illustrates some of the challenges of creat<strong>in</strong>g a digital
library of an <strong>in</strong>dividual manuscript, albeit one that exists <strong>in</strong> fragments <strong>in</strong> various collections. This
manuscript was handwritten more than 1,600 years ago and conta<strong>in</strong>s a copy of the Christian Bible <strong>in</strong>
Greek, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. This text, which has been heavily
corrected over the centuries, is of critical importance not just for Biblical studies but also as the oldest
“substantial book to survive antiquity,” is an important source of study for the “history of the book.”
The orig<strong>in</strong>al codex was distributed <strong>in</strong> unequal portions between London, Leipzig, S<strong>in</strong>ai, and St.
Petersburg, and an <strong>in</strong>ternational collaboration reunited the manuscript <strong>in</strong> digital form and has made it
available onl<strong>in</strong>e. A recent article by Dogan and Scharsky (2008) has described the technical and
metadata processes <strong>in</strong>volved <strong>in</strong> creat<strong>in</strong>g the digital edition of this codex that is available onl<strong>in</strong>e. They
stated that creation of the website <strong>in</strong>volved physical description of the manuscript, translation of
selected parts <strong>in</strong>to different languages such as German and English, the creation of a Greek
transcription, and the digital imag<strong>in</strong>g of the entire codex.
On the website, the user can choose to view the manuscript transcription either by “semantic layout”
(view by Biblical verse) or by manuscript layout (view by page). An image of the codex is presented
with the Greek transcription and, when available, a parallel translation of the verse <strong>in</strong> various
languages. The entire codex can also be searched (<strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g the transcription or the translation), and a
Greek “keyboard” is available to search <strong>in</strong> Greek. Dogan and Scharsky have reported that multispectral
images of the manuscript were also taken to “enable erased or hidden text to be discovered as well as
codicological and palaeographical characteristics of the Codex to be fully analysed.” Another major
challenge they noted was that almost every page <strong>in</strong>cludes “corrections, re-corrections and <strong>in</strong>sertions,
many of considerable textual significance.” A f<strong>in</strong>al goal of the project is to make available a fully
searchable electronic transcription of both the ma<strong>in</strong> text and corrections. The project developed a
specific schema based on the TEI to create a transcription that reflected both the Biblical structure
(book, chapter, verse) and the physical structure (quire, folio, page, column) of the manuscript.
Development of the website has also <strong>in</strong>volved creat<strong>in</strong>g a specialized l<strong>in</strong>kage system between image,
transcription, and translation.
395 http://www.codexs<strong>in</strong>aiticus.org/en/