This is my first list message. I am Robert D. Peckham (common net handle = TennesseeBob). I am not an expert in the production of facsimiles or "surrogates". As a French teacher at the University of Tennessee at Martin, I manage the Muriel Thomlinson Language Resource Center. For about a year, we ran MkLinux.org until it moved out to California. As a scholar, my area is medieval French, and I am founder/webmaster of Société François Villon, which has a yearly online bibliography. I have taken on a medieval manuscript project for the Andy Holt Virtual Library. In the larger project
Web for Medieval Source-based Textual Scholarship
http://www.utm.edu/staff/bobp/vlibrary/codicol.shtml
I simply wanted to link lessons and discussions about codecology and paleography, along with digitized manuscript facsimiles. I had hoped to be able to find some that the UCLA team had not, with
Consulting Medieval Manuscripts Online
http://www.utm.edu/staff/bobp/vlibrary/mdmss.shtml
In July at the AATF convention in Chicago, I will be presenting the only part of this that I am really qualified to do:
Manuscripts of Medieval France with Vernacular Texts
http://www.utm.edu/staff/bobp/vlibrary/frmedmss.shtml
This is a work in progress, and I have been taking advice from colleagues on MEDTEXTL, researchers in a European Research Council Project, editors with Libraria, Pecia and Archivalia, basically anyone with the tolerance to answer questions.
TennesseeBob
Robert D. Peckham, Ph.D.
Professor of French
Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques
University of Tennessee at Martin
Chair, AATF Commission on Advocacy
Director, Globe-gate Intercultural Web Project
With apologies for cross posting.
Decoding Digital Humanities (DDH) London will be meeting again on
* Wednesday 27 June 18:00 *
at The Jeremy Bentham, 31 University St., WC1E 6JL
(Please note the change of venue; in fact, back to where it all
started!)
This month we will be reading:
Steve Anderson. "Past Indiscretions: Digital Archives and Recombinant
History". In Marsha Kinder and Tara McPherson (eds.) Interactive
Frictions. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (forthcoming).
<http://www.technohistory.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Anderson_Past_Indis…>
Please feel free to disseminate this announcement.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Best wishes,
Richard
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Richard Lewis
ISMS, Computing
Goldsmiths, University of London
t: +44 (0)20 7078 5134
j: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li
@: lewisrichard
s: richardjlewis
http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Dear Digital Medievalist,
For a couple of new Internet editions of medieval manuscripts I've procured high-resolution tiff images, which I'm publishing with a "magnifying glass" overlay. This is in a "responsive" context, so the components of the page, including the images, resize to fit the window dimensions. There's a sample at:
http://suprasliensis.obdurodon.org/pages/supr001r.html
The current images were prepared quickly for a demo, and are not of consistent size or resolution. I would now like to go back to get this part of the site up to production quality, and I would be grateful for advice about how to manage the images, an area where I don't have much (= any) knowledge of best practice. I'd like small image files that load quickly, and I think I don't mind slightly lossy compression if that would reduce the file size substantially--but if that's a mistake, I'd be grateful for a warning. I think there are two questions:
1. What's an appropriate file format and resolution (size, dpi, color depth, etc.) for the base image, the one that is displayed in full to the right of the transcription, and that resizes as the user resizes the window? Currently the image files are in jpg format and vary in size from about 2M down to 250k. I can regenerate them all at a common size, resolution, color depth, etc. from the original tiffs, but I don't know whether there is any sense of best practice concerning what that size should be. If I go the lossy route, what's a reasonable value?
2. What's an appropriate degree of magnification for the magnifying-glass inset view? Currently the magnifying glass inset always shows the image at 200% of the actual file size (not the size of the page as displayed without magnification in the browser window!). You can see the difference by comparing, say, folio 30v (about 2MB) to 284r (about 270k), where the magnification is much greater in the former than the latter. I can set the level of magnification anywhere I'd like, but is there any agreement about best practice here?
By way of orientation in the question: the purpose of the full image is to allow the user to see the image conveniently alongside the transcription, verifying any moments where our editorial judgment might appear surprising or questionable. The point of the magnified inset is to let the user examine details that may not be visible at lesser magnification, such as erasures, corrections, etc. My casual impression is that 30v looks pretty good and loads reasonably quickly (although quicker would be better), but I don't place great confidence in my own casual impressions.
Thanks,
David
djbpitt(a)pitt.edu
(Apologies for cross-posting)
We are very pleased to announce that, following a one-year planning
grant, the Mellon Foundation has awarded the Medieval Electronic
Scholarly Alliance (MESA) a three-year implementation grant.
MESA serves two related purposes: to develop a federation of digital
medieval resources, and to provide peer review for scholarly digital
projects in all areas of medieval studies. MESA is a federation both
in the sense of a community - of scholars, librarians, and students
developing and using digital resources - and as a website that
federates disparate collections and projects. The website will provide
a search across various types of resources spanning the disciplines,
geographical areas, and temporal spans that make up the Middle Ages,
in the broadest sense.
MESA joins with Nineteenth Century Scholarship Online (www.nines.org),
18thConnect (www.18thconnect.org), and the Renaissance English
Knowledgebase (REKn) project as a node of the Advanced Research
Consortium (ARC). ARC is a developing organization, centered at Texas
A&M University and directed by Laura Mandell, which serves to provide
support for the constituent nodes. This support includes coordination,
sustainability, and scalability by providing shared infrastructure -
including development of the COLLEX platform and maintenance of a
shared catalog including metadata from objects represented in all the
nodes.
During the second half of 2012, we will be loading the first group of
12 resources into the MESA website. The site will launch with those
resources in late 2012. At the same time we will be developing our
procedures and policies for including other resources in the site. We
have already started compiling a list of projects and collections that
we would like to include in MESA in the second phase of the project
(after the initial launch). If you have a project that you would like
to see included in MESA, please contact us.
MESA Co-Directors
Dot Porter, Indiana University Bloomington
Timothy Stinson, North Carolina State University
MESA federation blog: http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/mesa/
Press Release from NCSU:
http://web.ncsu.edu/abstract/technology/wms-medieval-online/
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Dot Porter (MA, MSLS)
Digital Medievalist, Digital Librarian
Email: dot.porter(a)gmail.com
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Dear digital medieval colleagues:
I am new to this list and would like to introduce the project I am currently working on:
I try to document the manuscript transmission of late antique and early medieval monastic texts. I especially focus on monastic rules and on understudied texts with a wide dissemination.
As a side product I collected links to all catalogues of medieval manuscripts that are online or available on archive org - which turned out to be a rather useful tool. I am also collecting links to ongoing digital manuscript projects.
Especially for these pages I would be very happy to get some input from you.
Here are the links:
http://www.earlymedievalmonasticism.org/index.htmlhttp://www.earlymedievalmonasticism.org/Catalogues-of-Latin-Manuscripts.htmlhttp://www.earlymedievalmonasticism.org/listoflinks.html#Digital
Have a great summer!
Albrecht
Albrecht Diem
Dept. of History
Syracuse University
Apologies for cross-posting
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Pidd [mailto:m.pidd@sheffield.ac.uk]
Sent: 11 June 2012 12:44
To: Da Rold, Orietta (Dr.)
Subject: Digital Humanities Congress 2012 - Early-Bird Registration
Dear Orietta,
I'm pleased to announce that discounted registration is now available
until 30th June for the Digital Humanities Congress which will take
place in Sheffield during September 2012:
http://hridigital.shef.ac.uk/dhc2012
I would be grateful if you could circulate this link to other interested
colleagues.
With best wishes
Mike
--
Michael Pidd
HRI Digital Manager
Humanities Research Institute
University of Sheffield
34 Gell Street
Sheffield
S3 7QY
Tel: 0114 222 6113
Fax: 0114 222 9894
Email: m.pidd(a)sheffield.ac.uk
Web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/hri
Times Higher Education University of the Year
Call For Nominees
Digital Medievalist will be holding elections at the end of June for
four positions to its Executive Board. Board positions are for two
year terms and incumbents may be re-elected (for a maximum of three
terms in a row). Members of the Board are responsible for the overall
direction of the organisation and leading the Digital Medievalist’s
many projects and programmes. This is a working board, and so it would
be expected that you are willing and able to commit a little bit of
time to helping Digital Medievalist undertake some of its activities
(such as helping to run its its journal, conference sessions, etc.).
For further information about the Executive and Digital Medievalist
more generally please see the DM website, particularly:
- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/about.html
- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/bylaws.html
We are now seeking nominations (including self-nominations) for the
annual elections. In order to be eligible for election, candidates
must be members of Digital Medievalist (membership is conferred simply
by subscription to the organisation’s mailing list, dm-l at uleth.ca)
and have made some demonstrable contribution either to the DM project
(e.g. to the mailing list, or the wiki, etc.), or to the field of
digital medieval studies.
If you are interested in running for these positions or are able to
recommend a suitable candidate, please contact the returning officers,
James Cummings and Dominique Stutzmann:
election at digitalmedievalist.org
who will treat your nomination or enquiries in confidence. The
nomination period will close at 0000 UTC on Tuesday June 19 and
elections will be held by electronic ballot through the whole of the
week starting 25 June, 2012.