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

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compelled to operate <strong>in</strong> a bookish format,” we should also bear <strong>in</strong> m<strong>in</strong>d the opportunity to
correct the assumption that such books operate—and should be described—<strong>in</strong> parallel with
pr<strong>in</strong>ted books. Both our tools and our m<strong>in</strong>dsets need to be liberated from pr<strong>in</strong>t if we are to
achieve accurate representations of artifacts that were produced before the advent of pr<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>g
(St<strong>in</strong>son 2009).
The need to go beyond traditional pr<strong>in</strong>ted models and use the digital environment both to more
accurately represent cultural objects and artifacts and to “unleash” their latent semantic potential,
whether they are primary texts, archaeological monuments <strong>in</strong> ru<strong>in</strong>s, <strong>in</strong>scriptions on stone, or medieval
manuscripts, is a theme that has been throughout this review.
Digital Manuscripts, Infrastructure, and Automatic L<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g Technologies
As illustrated by the previous sections, any digital <strong>in</strong>frastructure designed for manuscripts will need to
address the complicated nature of manuscripts as both physical and digital objects, support a range of
scholarly uses, and provide effective access to all of the data created <strong>in</strong> their digitization (e.g., digital
images, diplomatic transcriptions, TEI-XML editions, scholarly annotations). One challenge is that
while there are many images of digital manuscripts available onl<strong>in</strong>e, many are viewable only through
special image-viewers and thus often do not have stable URLs that can be cited. Furthermore, many of
these digitized manuscripts do not have <strong>in</strong>dividual URLs for each page; consequently, l<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g to a
specific page, let alone an <strong>in</strong>dividual l<strong>in</strong>e or word, is impossible. Similarly, it is often difficult to
determ<strong>in</strong>e whether a digitized manuscript has a transcription available, and even if one has been
created, it is often even more difficult for a user to ga<strong>in</strong> access to it.
Two projects that are seek<strong>in</strong>g to create some of the necessary <strong>in</strong>frastructure for manuscripts that will
address some of these issues are the Interedition project and the Virtual Manuscript Room (VMR). The
Interedition project is focused on develop<strong>in</strong>g a “supranational networked <strong>in</strong>frastructure for digital
scholarly edit<strong>in</strong>g and analysis.” As the creation of digital editions, particularly <strong>in</strong> classical and
medieval studies, typically <strong>in</strong>volves the use of multiple manuscripts, their draft architecture addresses
the need to represent multiple manuscripts and l<strong>in</strong>k to both <strong>in</strong>dividual manuscript images and
transcriptions. 408
While Interedition is focused on the larger <strong>in</strong>frastructure required for digital editions, the VMR, 409
which is currently <strong>in</strong> its first phase, is concentrat<strong>in</strong>g on provid<strong>in</strong>g advanced access to an important
collection of manuscripts. They have provided access to fully digitized manuscripts from the M<strong>in</strong>gana
Collection of Middle Eastern Manuscripts at the University of Birm<strong>in</strong>gham. Each digitized manuscript
<strong>in</strong>cludes high-resolution images of each page and descriptions from both the pr<strong>in</strong>ted catalog and the
special collections department that holds them. In their next phase, they will add more content,
<strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g 50,000 digital manuscript images, 500 manuscript descriptions, and 1,000 transcription
pages. Even more important, however, the next phase of the VMR’s work will <strong>in</strong>volve the
development of a framework for digital manuscripts that will:
…br<strong>in</strong>g together digital resources related to manuscript materials (digital images, descriptions
and other metadata, transcripts) <strong>in</strong> an environment which will permit libraries to add images,
scholars to add and edit metadata and transcripts onl<strong>in</strong>e, and users to access material
(http://vmr.bham.ac.uk/about/).
408 http://www.<strong>in</strong>teredition.eu/wiki/<strong>in</strong>dex.php/WG2:Architecture
409 http://vmr.bham.ac.uk/