Hi all,
I thought I'd pass this on to our list and digital classicist, since some of us may have had experience with similar techniques (I'm relatively sure I saw a talk on the question recently). Please make sure you cc Dr. Wisnicki, since he may not hang out in our circles!
I’ve come across a textual issue that I’m not sure how to resolve, and I’m hoping that someone on the list might have some suggestions or even the answer. I’m currently doing some research on the final African diaries of David Livingstone, the missionary and explorer. While keeping these diaries, Livingstone was often short of paper and, as a result, resorted to various expedients to keep the diaries going. One of these expedients was to take printed pages from books and newspapers, and, by turning the pages 90 degrees, to write his diary over the printed text, but perpendicular to it. Although perhaps legible at the time, these diary entries now are often difficult to decipher: Livingstone’s ink has faded and the printed text obscures what remains.
So, in other words, the diary entries have two layers of text: printed matter which runs horizontally across the page, and Livingstone’s entries which run vertically. I’ve scanned some of these pages and was wondering if there’s a way (or, perhaps, a program) by which I might remove the printed layer so as to make the handwritten layer freestanding and so more legible. Has anyone on the list dealt with (and resolved) a similar issue? If so, please email me at awisnicki@yahoo.com -- any suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Dr. Adrian S. Wisnicki Honorary Research Fellow School of English and Humanities Birkbeck College, University of London
Dear Dr. Wisnicki and All,
I'm not sure if this is totally relevant, but I think that it is. In dealing with the Greek manuscripts that were discovered at St. Catherine's (the Sinai) a couple of decades ago (I think), James Charlesworth (of Princeton Theological Seminary) was able to use imaging technology from NASA (I believe) to recover images in palimpsest leaves. (He talked about this while he was at Oberlin giving the Haskell Lectures).
I'll try to follow up on this a bit. (And this technology may be widely known by now.) It seems like it would work to distinguish between the "two texts".
Best regards
Grover Zinn
Grover A. Zinn William H. Danforth Professor of Religion (emeritus) former Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Oberlin College Oberlin, OH 44074 440-775-8866 (department) grover.zinn@oberlin.edu
On Jul 5, 2009, at 4:45 PM, Daniel Paul O'Donnell wrote:
Hi all,
I thought I'd pass this on to our list and digital classicist, since some of us may have had experience with similar techniques (I'm relatively sure I saw a talk on the question recently). Please make sure you cc Dr. Wisnicki, since he may not hang out in our circles!
I’ve come across a textual issue that I’m not sure how to resolve, and I’m hoping that someone on the list might have some suggestions or even the answer. I’m currently doing some research on the final African diaries of David Livingstone, the missionary and explorer. While keeping these diaries, Livingstone was often short of paper and, as a result, resorted to various expedients to keep the diaries going. One of these expedients was to take printed pages from books and newspapers, and, by turning the pages 90 degrees, to write his diary over the printed text, but perpendicular to it. Although perhaps legible at the time, these diary entries now are often difficult to decipher: Livingstone’s ink has faded and the printed text obscures what remains.
So, in other words, the diary entries have two layers of text: printed matter which runs horizontally across the page, and Livingstone’s entries which run vertically. I’ve scanned some of these pages and was wondering if there’s a way (or, perhaps, a program) by which I might remove the printed layer so as to make the handwritten layer freestanding and so more legible. Has anyone on the list dealt with (and resolved) a similar issue? If so, please email me at awisnicki@yahoo.com -- any suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Dr. Adrian S. Wisnicki Honorary Research Fellow School of English and Humanities Birkbeck College, University of London
-- Daniel Paul O'Donnell Associate Professor of English University of Lethbridge
Chair and CEO, Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org/) Co-Chair, Digital Initiatives Advisory Board, Medieval Academy of America President-elect (English), Society for Digital Humanities/Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs (http://sdh-semi.org/) Founding Director (2003-2009), Digital Medievalist Project (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ )
Vox: +1 403 329-2377 Fax: +1 403 382-7191 (non-confidental) Home Page: http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Dear all,
This is similar to, if not the same as, the technology Dr. Zinn was describing--the Ancient Texts Imaging Group at Brigham Young University uses multi-spectral imaging (first used by NASA) to read palimpsests and darkened papyrus damaged by fire.
Here's an old article about the technology, though they're still active and were at the University of Michigan in the last couple of weeks imaging some of our papyrus collection: http://www.et.byu.edu/news_imaging.htm
I know this works best if the two inks on top of each other are made of different compounds, so that one is enhanced as the other one fades (some work best with infrared rays, some with UV, etc). However, I don't think this technology could be applied to scanned images--the leaves would have to be imaged again using the multi-spectral filters.
Best, Rebecca Welzenbach
Quoting Grover Zinn grover.zinn@oberlin.edu:
Dear Dr. Wisnicki and All,
I'm not sure if this is totally relevant, but I think that it is. In dealing with the Greek manuscripts that were discovered at St. Catherine's (the Sinai) a couple of decades ago (I think), James Charlesworth (of Princeton Theological Seminary) was able to use imaging technology from NASA (I believe) to recover images in palimpsest leaves. (He talked about this while he was at Oberlin giving the Haskell Lectures).
I'll try to follow up on this a bit. (And this technology may be widely known by now.) It seems like it would work to distinguish between the "two texts".
Best regards
Grover Zinn
Grover A. Zinn William H. Danforth Professor of Religion (emeritus) former Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Oberlin College Oberlin, OH 44074 440-775-8866 (department) grover.zinn@oberlin.edu
On Jul 5, 2009, at 4:45 PM, Daniel Paul O'Donnell wrote:
Hi all,
I thought I'd pass this on to our list and digital classicist, since some of us may have had experience with similar techniques (I'm relatively sure I saw a talk on the question recently). Please make sure you cc Dr. Wisnicki, since he may not hang out in our circles!
I’ve come across a textual issue that I’m not sure how to resolve, and I’m hoping that someone on the list might have some suggestions or even the answer. I’m currently doing some research on the final African diaries of David Livingstone, the missionary and explorer. While keeping these diaries, Livingstone was often short of paper and, as a result, resorted to various expedients to keep the diaries going. One of these expedients was to take printed pages from books and newspapers, and, by turning the pages 90 degrees, to write his diary over the printed text, but perpendicular to it. Although perhaps legible at the time, these diary entries now are often difficult to decipher: Livingstone’s ink has faded and the printed text obscures what remains.
So, in other words, the diary entries have two layers of text: printed matter which runs horizontally across the page, and Livingstone’s entries which run vertically. I’ve scanned some of these pages and was wondering if there’s a way (or, perhaps, a program) by which I might remove the printed layer so as to make the handwritten layer freestanding and so more legible. Has anyone on the list dealt with (and resolved) a similar issue? If so, please email me at awisnicki@yahoo.com -- any suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Dr. Adrian S. Wisnicki Honorary Research Fellow School of English and Humanities Birkbeck College, University of London
-- Daniel Paul O'Donnell Associate Professor of English University of Lethbridge
Chair and CEO, Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org/) Co-Chair, Digital Initiatives Advisory Board, Medieval Academy of America President-elect (English), Society for Digital Humanities/Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs (http://sdh-semi.org/) Founding Director (2003-2009), Digital Medievalist Project (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/)
Vox: +1 403 329-2377 Fax: +1 403 382-7191 (non-confidental) Home Page: http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Dear everyone,
This is the first thing I thought of as well, but the afaik materials would have to be re-scanned using special multi-spectral imaging equipment. However, if the inks are different enough in colour and tone, I'd think that you could build a process into regular image processing software (such as Photoshop) that could differentiate between the two inks. Not that I've ever done this myself.
Dot
On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 2:09 AM, rwelzenb@umich.edu wrote:
Dear all,
This is similar to, if not the same as, the technology Dr. Zinn was describing--the Ancient Texts Imaging Group at Brigham Young University uses multi-spectral imaging (first used by NASA) to read palimpsests and darkened papyrus damaged by fire.
Here's an old article about the technology, though they're still active and were at the University of Michigan in the last couple of weeks imaging some of our papyrus collection: http://www.et.byu.edu/news_imaging.htm
I know this works best if the two inks on top of each other are made of different compounds, so that one is enhanced as the other one fades (some work best with infrared rays, some with UV, etc). However, I don't think this technology could be applied to scanned images--the leaves would have to be imaged again using the multi-spectral filters.
Best, Rebecca Welzenbach
Quoting Grover Zinn grover.zinn@oberlin.edu:
Dear Dr. Wisnicki and All,
I'm not sure if this is totally relevant, but I think that it is. In dealing with the Greek manuscripts that were discovered at St. Catherine's (the Sinai) a couple of decades ago (I think), James Charlesworth (of Princeton Theological Seminary) was able to use imaging technology from NASA (I believe) to recover images in palimpsest leaves. (He talked about this while he was at Oberlin giving the Haskell Lectures).
I'll try to follow up on this a bit. (And this technology may be widely known by now.) It seems like it would work to distinguish between the "two texts".
Best regards
Grover Zinn
Grover A. Zinn William H. Danforth Professor of Religion (emeritus) former Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Oberlin College Oberlin, OH 44074 440-775-8866 (department) grover.zinn@oberlin.edu
On Jul 5, 2009, at 4:45 PM, Daniel Paul O'Donnell wrote:
Hi all,
I thought I'd pass this on to our list and digital classicist, since some of us may have had experience with similar techniques (I'm relatively sure I saw a talk on the question recently). Please make sure you cc Dr. Wisnicki, since he may not hang out in our circles!
I’ve come across a textual issue that I’m not sure how to resolve, and I’m hoping that someone on the list might have some suggestions or even the answer. I’m currently doing some research on the final African diaries of David Livingstone, the missionary and explorer. While keeping these diaries, Livingstone was often short of paper and, as a result, resorted to various expedients to keep the diaries going. One of these expedients was to take printed pages from books and newspapers, and, by turning the pages 90 degrees, to write his diary over the printed text, but perpendicular to it. Although perhaps legible at the time, these diary entries now are often difficult to decipher: Livingstone’s ink has faded and the printed text obscures what remains.
So, in other words, the diary entries have two layers of text: printed matter which runs horizontally across the page, and Livingstone’s entries which run vertically. I’ve scanned some of these pages and was wondering if there’s a way (or, perhaps, a program) by which I might remove the printed layer so as to make the handwritten layer freestanding and so more legible. Has anyone on the list dealt with (and resolved) a similar issue? If so, please email me at awisnicki@yahoo.com -- any suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Dr. Adrian S. Wisnicki Honorary Research Fellow School of English and Humanities Birkbeck College, University of London
-- Daniel Paul O'Donnell Associate Professor of English University of Lethbridge
Chair and CEO, Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org/) Co-Chair, Digital Initiatives Advisory Board, Medieval Academy of America President-elect (English), Society for Digital Humanities/Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs (http://sdh-semi.org/) Founding Director (2003-2009), Digital Medievalist Project (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/)
Vox: +1 403 329-2377 Fax: +1 403 382-7191 (non-confidental) Home Page: http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Rebecca Welzenbach, MSI 2009 School of Information, University of Michigan rwelzenb@umich.edu
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Dear All, a successful experience in multispectral imaging applied to medieval manuscripts is the 2004 European Project "Rinascimento Virtuale" http://palin.iccu.sbn.it, now to be continued at the Bergamo University.
I would like also to announce the next Montepulciano (Siena, Italy) Seminar "Edizioni Digitali alla ricerca di standards", 4th meeting of the Arezzo DIGIMED series and part of the 1st Master Courses "Informatica del testo-Edizione digitale" of the Siena-Arezzo University. See please the program at http://www.infotext.unisi.it.
Best wishes Francesco Stella
Dear all,
This is similar to, if not the same as, the technology Dr. Zinn was describing--the Ancient Texts Imaging Group at Brigham Young University uses multi-spectral imaging (first used by NASA) to read palimpsests and darkened papyrus damaged by fire.
Here's an old article about the technology, though they're still active and were at the University of Michigan in the last couple of weeks imaging some of our papyrus collection: http://www.et.byu.edu/news_imaging.htm
I know this works best if the two inks on top of each other are made of different compounds, so that one is enhanced as the other one fades (some work best with infrared rays, some with UV, etc). However, I don't think this technology could be applied to scanned images--the leaves would have to be imaged again using the multi-spectral filters.
Best, Rebecca Welzenbach
Quoting Grover Zinn grover.zinn@oberlin.edu:
Dear Dr. Wisnicki and All,
I'm not sure if this is totally relevant, but I think that it is. In dealing with the Greek manuscripts that were discovered at St. Catherine's (the Sinai) a couple of decades ago (I think), James Charlesworth (of Princeton Theological Seminary) was able to use imaging technology from NASA (I believe) to recover images in palimpsest leaves. (He talked about this while he was at Oberlin giving the Haskell Lectures).
I'll try to follow up on this a bit. (And this technology may be widely known by now.) It seems like it would work to distinguish between the "two texts".
Best regards
Grover Zinn
Grover A. Zinn William H. Danforth Professor of Religion (emeritus) former Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Oberlin College Oberlin, OH 44074 440-775-8866 (department) grover.zinn@oberlin.edu
On Jul 5, 2009, at 4:45 PM, Daniel Paul O'Donnell wrote:
Hi all,
I thought I'd pass this on to our list and digital classicist, since some of us may have had experience with similar techniques (I'm relatively sure I saw a talk on the question recently). Please make sure you cc Dr. Wisnicki, since he may not hang out in our circles!
Iâve come across a textual issue that Iâm not sure how to resolve, and Iâm hoping that someone on the list might have some suggestions or even the answer. Iâm currently doing some research on the final African diaries of David Livingstone, the missionary and explorer. While keeping these diaries, Livingstone was often short of paper and, as a result, resorted to various expedients to keep the diaries going. One of these expedients was to take printed pages from books and newspapers, and, by turning the pages 90 degrees, to write his diary over the printed text, but perpendicular to it. Although perhaps legible at the time, these diary entries now are often difficult to decipher: Livingstoneâs ink has faded and the printed text obscures what remains.
So, in other words, the diary entries have two layers of text: printed matter which runs horizontally across the page, and Livingstoneâs entries which run vertically. Iâve scanned some of these pages and was wondering if thereâs a way (or, perhaps, a program) by which I might remove the printed layer so as to make the handwritten layer freestanding and so more legible. Has anyone on the list dealt with (and resolved) a similar issue? If so, please email me at awisnicki@yahoo.com -- any suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Dr. Adrian S. Wisnicki Honorary Research Fellow School of English and Humanities Birkbeck College, University of London
-- Daniel Paul O'Donnell Associate Professor of English University of Lethbridge
Chair and CEO, Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org/) Co-Chair, Digital Initiatives Advisory Board, Medieval Academy of America President-elect (English), Society for Digital Humanities/Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs (http://sdh-semi.org/) Founding Director (2003-2009), Digital Medievalist Project (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/)
Vox: +1 403 329-2377 Fax: +1 403 382-7191 (non-confidental) Home Page: http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
-- Rebecca Welzenbach, MSI 2009 School of Information, University of Michigan rwelzenb@umich.edu
Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Dear all,
I agree with the others that may be possible, ideally with hyperspectral imaging but also with Photoshop (or the GIMP); it's fairly easy if the two layers of ink are sufficiently different, otherwise it's much more complicated. There's a discussion of some techniques using Photoshop by Julia Craig-McFeely in Vol 4 of our own DM Journal (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/3/mcfeely; see the section 'Digital Restoration'): she focusses on damaged manuscripts but the principles are much the same. I did similar work myself using Photoshop and no special imaging for the Rinascimento Virtuale project that Francesco Stella mentioned, so I'm happy to discuss it further and am also happy to look at some sample images if you want to send them to me off-list.
I also have a forthcoming article on the topic and some prototype software which tries to simplify the process; again, contact me if you're interested.
Peter
I saw a demonstration at Kalamazoo where one layer of text was colored red (Photoshop, Gimp, etc.) while everything else (non-neutral) was colored blue. Then, looking at the image through standard red/blue 3D glasses, the palimpsest popped off the page. This is a poor man's version of multi-spectral imaging and it depends on the possibility of isolating one layer of ink by color, but it was surprising how well it worked!
Jesse
Dear everyone Today we are launching the first phase of the Virtual Manuscript Room, with full sets of digital images for 71 manuscripts from the Mingana collection (some 13000 images). You can find the site at http://www.vmr.bham.ac.uk . Among other things, the site has images of one of the oldest copies of the Qur'an in existence, Mingana Islamic Arabic 1572, recently dated as possibly 7th century.
The site has some interesting features. Firstly, it is completely integrated with the university's institutional repository: see http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/ (the manuscripts are at http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/view/series/Mingana.html) . This gives them a presence in the online catalogues, which means they can be found by Google,and also provides a secure long-term maintenance strategy. Secondly, we developed a new image viewer, using the 'Open Layers' software. This is not finished yet, but already offers some nice developments: it does not use Flash (it is entirely javascript based); the viewer resizes horizontally as the window resizes; it has a 'carousel' which allows you to browse thumbnails of all the manuscript pages within the viewer. Finally, following my well-known philosophy, it is low-cost: the imaging cost around 50 pence a page; the whole cost of the site was a few pounds a page. Note that the imaging was done a few years ago and lacks some things (rulers, colour bars) which we should now include.
Enjoy! all the best Peter
Folks-- This from a 1992 post. I remembered that John Benton was involved with the JPL in some pretty sophisticated work on difficult-to-read manuscripts. FYI. -Raymond CORMIER
Manuscripts From: Walter Henry <whenry> Date: Friday, June 5, 1992 The following exchange took place recently in MEDTEXTL and is reproduced here without the knowledge or consent of the authors.
Date: Sun, 17 May 1992 20:52:34 CST Reply-To: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> Sender: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> From: James Marchand <marchand [at] UX1__CSO__UIUC__EDU> Subject: Invasive techniques We discussed at length once before the use of invasive techniques in deciphering manuscripts. I picked up a book at K'zoo based mostly on the title and one of the articles: Dechiffrer les ecritures effacees, ed. Lucie Fossier et Jean Irigoin. Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Paris, 1990. When I mention that there are still people out there who are spilling chemicals on manuscripts, I am usually greeted with disbelief. I just mention one of the articles: "La revelation chimique des encre palies," by Francoise Flieder. I recently received a request by Octavio Paz for help in deciphering a faded manuscript by a deceased Mexican poet. The manuscript had been carried around in his pocket, was written in pencil, and had been faded out; a perfect candidate for mono- chromatic light, say, UV or infra-red or both, and enhancement. Alas, it had already been treated with chemicals. Many of our Gothic manuscripts, struck by "die wildangewandte Gallapfeltinktur Angelo Mais", are illegible forever, as is for the most part the Auxentius manuscript. We ought to put a stop to the use of invasive techniques and intrusive measures in dealing with manuscripts, and this includes using the wrong kind of ultra- violet lights. Jim Marchand
Date: Sun, 17 May 1992 22:52:58 EST Reply-To: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> Sender: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> From: Kevin Kiernan <ENG102 [at] UKCC__UKY__EDU> Subject: Re: Invasive techniques Jim, Does the Fossier and Irigoin collection include "The Electronic Subtraction of the Superior Writing of a Palimpsest," by the late John Benton? Kevin Kiernan, eng102 [at] ukcc__uky__edu
Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 06:09:41 CDT Reply-To: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> Sender: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> From: John Dagenais <dagenais [at] CASBAH__ACNS__NWU__EDU> Subject: Re: Invasive techniques Jim, Maybe this would be a good moment to bring some of us (i.e., me) up to speed on the alternatives to invasive techniques available now and in the near future. I know that various image processing, computer enhancing techniques are out there, but I don't really know what they will do for the average reader of manuscripts at this point. Are they being used at all now, or are they still on our wish list? Thanks, John Dagenais Dept. of Hispanic Studies Northwestern University Evanston, IL 60208 j-dagenais [at] nwu__edu
Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 09:24:28 EDT Reply-To: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> Sender: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> From: Mark Williams <wilm [at] CALVIN__EDU> Subject: Re: Invasive techniques I seem to recall talking to a guy from (I think) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, of all places, at an American Philological Assn. meeting about ten years ago about the availability of JPL's photographic enhancement techniques for such things as decipherment of MSS. He told me that JPL was more than willing to perform this service, although it would cost a bit. I never followed up on the conversation. Anybody else know whether this service is still available, and at what cost? Sorry to be so vague on this, but it's that time of year.... Mark Williams Internet: WILM [at] calvin__edu Classics Department Voice: (616) 957-6293 Calvin College Fax: (616) 957-8551 Grand Rapids, MI USA 49546
Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 11:14:47 EST Reply-To: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> Sender: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> From: Kevin Kiernan <ENG102 [at] UKCC__UKY__EDU> Subject: JPL and image processing On Mon, 18 May 1992 09:24:28 EDT Mark Williams said:
I seem to recall talking to a guy from (I think) Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
... John Benton told me about ten years ago that the person who had been doing image processing of texts at JPL was no longer there and that JPL had moved on to other, less terrestrial interests. Kevin Kiernan, eng102 [at] ukcc__uky__edu Reply-To: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> Sender: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> From: Willis Johnson <willis [at] VIOLET__BERKELEY__EDU> Subject: Invasive techniques, photocopying A couple of summers ago I was at a small archive in London, equipped with my lowlight camera (no flash) and tripod preparing to copy a 14th century MS. The archivist suggested that it would be less trouble to simply xerox the MS, and offered the use of his own standard office style xerox machine! Needless to say I declined, mumbling something about making slides. Standards vary... willis [at] violet__berkeley__edu
Date: Tue, 19 May 1992 09:24:19 PDT Reply-To: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> Sender: "Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc." <MEDTEXTL [at] UIUCVMD__BITNET> From: Charles Faulhaber <cbf [at] ATHENA__BERKELEY__EDU> Subject: Re: Invasive techniques, photocopying It is still standard practice in smaller Spanish libraries and archives to xerox medieval MSS and documents. Apropos, in the latest issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine there were a couple of letters chiding the curators of the Beinecke manuscript collection (photographed in an article in an earlier issue) for improper techniques of handling MSS, including one from a gentlemen who insisted that parchment MSS should only be handled with gloves. Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley *** Conservation DistList Instance 6:1 Distributed: Friday, June 5, 1992 Message Id: cdl-6-1-009 ***
Received on Fri Jun 05 1992 - 00:00:00 PDT
Raymond Cormier Longwood University ________________________________________ From: dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca [dm-l-bounces@uleth.ca] On Behalf Of Daniel Paul O'Donnell [daniel.odonnell@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 4:45 PM To: Digital Medievalist Cc: awisnicki@yahoo.com Subject: [dm-l] Manuscript Imaging Question
Hi all,
I thought I'd pass this on to our list and digital classicist, since some of us may have had experience with similar techniques (I'm relatively sure I saw a talk on the question recently). Please make sure you cc Dr. Wisnicki, since he may not hang out in our circles!
I’ve come across a textual issue that I’m not sure how to resolve, and I’m hoping that someone on the list might have some suggestions or even the answer. I’m currently doing some research on the final African diaries of David Livingstone, the missionary and explorer. While keeping these diaries, Livingstone was often short of paper and, as a result, resorted to various expedients to keep the diaries going. One of these expedients was to take printed pages from books and newspapers, and, by turning the pages 90 degrees, to write his diary over the printed text, but perpendicular to it. Although perhaps legible at the time, these diary entries now are often difficult to decipher: Livingstone’s ink has faded and the printed text obscures what remains.
So, in other words, the diary entries have two layers of text: printed matter which runs horizontally across the page, and Livingstone’s entries which run vertically. I’ve scanned some of these pages and was wondering if there’s a way (or, perhaps, a program) by which I might remove the printed layer so as to make the handwritten layer freestanding and so more legible. Has anyone on the list dealt with (and resolved) a similar issue? If so, please email me at awisnicki@yahoo.com -- any suggestions would be very much appreciated.
Dr. Adrian S. Wisnicki Honorary Research Fellow School of English and Humanities Birkbeck College, University of London
-- Daniel Paul O'Donnell Associate Professor of English University of Lethbridge
Chair and CEO, Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org/) Co-Chair, Digital Initiatives Advisory Board, Medieval Academy of America President-elect (English), Society for Digital Humanities/Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs (http://sdh-semi.org/) Founding Director (2003-2009), Digital Medievalist Project (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/)
Vox: +1 403 329-2377 Fax: +1 403 382-7191 (non-confidental) Home Page: http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/
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Cormier, Raymond -
Daniel Paul O'Donnell -
Dot Porter -
Grover Zinn -
Jesse Hurlbut -
Peter Robinson -
Peter Stokes -
rwelzenb＠umich.edu -
stella＠unisi.it