=== CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ===
== Research Summit on Collation of Ancient and Medieval Texts == COST Action IS1005 'Medioevo Europeo' Münster (Germany), 3 & 4 October 2014
Comparison and collation are part of the primitives of textual scholarship—as John Unsworth has dubbed the generic and basic tasks of this field. They are tedious, error prone, and subject to unwitting bias, and the quest for formalized ways of guiding these tasks is as old, if not older, than philology itself. The last thirty years have seen the adoption of several digital approaches to textual collation, from heuristics-supported Collate to fully algorithmic Juxta. What is the current state of the art of digital collation? How do we apply it to manuscript texts? Does CollateX turn collation into a solved problem? What are the prospects for multilingual collation? It is these kind of questions that underlie a research summit on collation to be held in Münster on 3 and 4 October 2014.
The COST Action IS1005 'Medioevo Europeo' (http://www.medioevoeuropeo.org/) has kindly offered funding to organize this focused research summit on (digital) collation for ancient, medieval manuscript, and early print texts. This summit is kindly hosted by the Institute für Neutestamentliche Textforschung (INTF) of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster ( http://egora.uni-muenster.de/intf/index_en.shtml), representing a wealth of knowledge and experience on the collation of witnesses for the Greek New Testament.
This summit will allow the participants to inform themselves about the issues, methods, and tools involved with collating older texts for scholarly purposes. The summit will feature some of the most prominent scholars in this area who will offer an overview of scholarly theory underpinning collation, the history of digital support for this scholarly task, and the praxis of current collation techniques. The summit will also offer a intensive hands-on training in digital collation by researcher/developers that were involved in building CollateX ( http://collatex.net), Juxta (http://www.juxtasoftware.org/), and several other tools for scholarly editing.
The second day of the summit features a day long clinic for participants who apply collation in their scholarly research. We offer the possibility for participants to present both theoretical and practical problems and solutions for collating old texts. We invite them to show their work, tools, problems, needs, and results of applied collation in scholarly editing.
== HOW TO PARTICIPATE ==
This unique research summit is open for participation by all scholars and developers involved in the application of (digital) collation of older texts. There are two ways to attend: as a regular attendee or as a presenter of a collation use case during the clinics on the second day of the research summit. We highly encourage participants to present their collation related work during one of the clinics. To do so send a statement of interest and short description of your proposed contribution to the clinic (no more than 300 words) to joris.van.zundert@huygens.knaw.nl. Deadline of submission is August 1, 2014.
As we seek to encourage the participation of early-stage researchers (PhD students or post-doctoral researchers), a limited number of bursaries are available to cover travel expenses. If you wish to apply for one of these, please submit an additional statement motivating your application (main criteria are importance of this workshop for your current research and absence of other possible funding). Abstracts and applications for bursaries will be evaluated by the scientific committee. Successful candidates will be notified of acceptance on August 15, 2014. Participants will be offered travel reimbursements according to COST rules and limitations (i.e. reimbursement of flight/travel and a 100 Euro lodging and sustenance fee per day of up to a maximum of three days).
To register as a regular attendee, please go to: http://collatex.net/researchsummit . Registration closes on September 15, 2014.
== PROGRAM (subject to change) ==
= Day 1, Friday 3 October 2014 =
10.00-10.30 Caroline Macé (KU Leuven) "Collations vs Transcriptions—advantages and shortcomings. And what we want to do with collations"
10.30-11.30 Peter Robinson (University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon) "Misconceptions of Scholarly Collation in Digital Collation"
11.30-12.15 Klaus Wachtel & Marie-Luise Lakmann (INTF) "Praxis of Collation: The Greek New Testament Project"
12.15-13.00 Barbara Bordalejo (KU Leuven) "Praxis of Collation: The Canterbury Tales Project"
13.00-14.00 Break
14.00-14.30 Joris van Zundert (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands) "Code, Collation, Interpretation"
14.30-15.00 Ronald Dekker (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands) "Digital Collation: Model and Theory"
15.00-16.00 Hands On: Working with CollateX (Instructors: Gregor Middell, Ronald Dekker, Tara Andrews)
16.00-17.00 Hands On: Interfacing with CollateX—Web service, Juxta, nCritic, eXist-db (Instructors: Gregor Middell, Ronald Dekker, Tara Andrews, Leif-Jöran Olsson)
= Day 2, Saturday 4 October 2014 =
10.00-13.00 Clinic I: Projects by Participants
13.00-14.00 Break
14.00-16.00 Clinic II: Projects by Participants
16.00-17.00 Problems of Collation – Explorative and concluding session on current and future needs of digital support for scholarly collation
== MORE INFORMATION ==
Any inquiries about this research summit may be directed to joris.van.zundert@huygens.knaw.nl
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