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

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library was supported by the Mellon Foundation, and by the end of 2009 the website provided access
to digital surrogates of roughly 130 manuscripts through either a French or an English <strong>in</strong>terface. The
website <strong>in</strong>cludes a list of all extant manuscripts as well as a collection spreadsheet that can be sorted by
various columns if a user wants to sort manuscripts alphabetically or by number of illustrations.
Click<strong>in</strong>g on any <strong>in</strong>dividual manuscript name l<strong>in</strong>ks to a full codicological description 398 that also
<strong>in</strong>cludes a l<strong>in</strong>k to the digitized manuscript. Individual manuscripts can be read page by page <strong>in</strong> a
special viewer with a variety of other view<strong>in</strong>g options such as (full screen) or by zoom<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> on the
<strong>in</strong>dividual pages. 399 For several manuscripts, a transcription can also be viewed on screen at the same
time as some <strong>in</strong>dividual manuscript pages. Individual and citable URLs are provided for the
codicological descriptions 400 and for two-page views of the manuscripts with<strong>in</strong> the special view<strong>in</strong>g
application. 401
In addition to choos<strong>in</strong>g manuscripts from the collection spreadsheet, users can select <strong>in</strong>dividual
manuscripts by brows<strong>in</strong>g the collection by repository, common name, current location, date, orig<strong>in</strong>,
type, number of illustrations or folios, and availability of transcription. Once a manuscript has been
selected, a user can choose to exam<strong>in</strong>e the codicological description, to view it <strong>in</strong> the “page turner”
application described above, or to simply browse the images <strong>in</strong> a special viewer. Each manuscript also
<strong>in</strong>cludes a full bibliography. Both a basic keyword and advanced search feature are available, and the
advanced search allows for multiple keyword search<strong>in</strong>g with<strong>in</strong> various fields (l<strong>in</strong>es of verse, rubric,
illustration title, narrative sections, etc.)
With such a large number of digital surrogates available, one of the most significant opportunities
presented by the RRDL is the possibility of “cross manuscript comparative study.” To facilitate this,
the creators of this collection found it necessary to create a new text organizational structure called
narrative sections as expla<strong>in</strong>ed on the website: 402
Citation practice for the Roman de la Rose and most medieval texts have traditionally
referenced the currently accepted critical editions. This scholarly protocol <strong>in</strong>hibits the crossmanuscript
comparative study that the RRDL promotes. S<strong>in</strong>ce the number of l<strong>in</strong>es for the work
varies from one manuscript to another, depend<strong>in</strong>g on <strong>in</strong>terpolations or excisions, the narrative
mapp<strong>in</strong>g of the Roman de la Rose divides the text <strong>in</strong>to read<strong>in</strong>g segments <strong>in</strong>stead of l<strong>in</strong>es. This
means that comparable passages across different manuscript can be readily locatable, while
number of l<strong>in</strong>es for each section facilitates track<strong>in</strong>g variations <strong>in</strong> section length from one
exemplar to another. The narrative-mapp<strong>in</strong>g protocol borrows from that used for classical texts,
where one cites not a page number or a given edition or translation but a segment of the text.
The narrative mapp<strong>in</strong>g was largely generated algorithmically but should be accurate to with<strong>in</strong> one or
two columns of texts. By select<strong>in</strong>g a narrative section, users can be taken to a list of image sections for
the different manuscripts that conta<strong>in</strong> that section so they can compare the <strong>in</strong>dividual manuscript
sections themselves. The need to create a new canonical text structure <strong>in</strong>dependent of particular
scholarly editions or conventions to facilitate the citation, navigation, and use of manuscripts <strong>in</strong> a
digital environment was an issue also articulated by the creators of the CTS <strong>in</strong> terms of classical texts,
<strong>in</strong>dicat<strong>in</strong>g that there are many similar digital challenges to be resolved across discipl<strong>in</strong>es.
398 Manuscript descriptions have been encoded <strong>in</strong> TEI P5 (St<strong>in</strong>son 2009).
399 http://romandelarose.org/#read;Douce195.156v.tif
400 http://romandelarose.org/#book;SeldenSupra57
401 http://romandelarose.org/#read;SeldenSupra57.013r.tif
402 http://romandelarose.org/#sections