Methods of linking textual and graphic data “

Digitizing Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, eds. Brent Nelson, Melissa Terras, ACMRS, 2011

With the now widespread availability of digitized data, researchers in the humanities are learning to go about their work in new ways-and requiring new research tools to do so.

2021

Review of: David Hamidovič, Claire Clivaz, Sarah Bowen Savant (eds.), in coll. with Alessandra Marguerat, Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture. Visualization, Data Mining, Communication, Brill, Leiden–Boston 2019 (Digital Biblical Studies, 3), PP. XVI + 28

Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies (COMSt) Newsletter 7, pp. 7-8

2022

This essay is focused on the development of new digital paleographical methods to support the study of medieval and modern manuscripts. The potential of image manipulation software such as Adobe Photoshop has not yet been entirely explored, especially if we consider the constant improvements and new features that are offered by continual software updates. Compared to traditional (human eye on the page) manuscript reading, digital imaging processing offers many tools for the analysis of script from several different paleographical perspectives: for instance, close reading of the external shape of words or single letters as well as overlaying letter comparison to define commonalities and differences via accurate pixel computation. In addition, features of this software can be used to enhance readings and build knowledge by restoring effaced, discolored, or corrupted parchment without affecting the original document. The poetic corpus written by Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) during the thirteenth century, entitled Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, also known as the Canzoniere, serves as a case study here. This corpus is fascinating in part because it is extremely rare in medieval literature to be able to trace the process of author revision from first draft (MS Vat. Lat. 3196) through definitive final copy (MS Vat. Lat. 3195). Petrarch is in fact the only medieval poet for whom we have the original autograph manuscript. In composing the Canzoniere, Petrarch transcribed poems previously written in Vat. Lat. 3196, also known as the Codice degli abbozzi, to Vat. Lat. 3195. Since an autograph always provides invaluable insight into a text's genesis and creation, these two codices remain at the center of a long hermeneutical and philological debate. 1 My thanks to Dr. Amyrose McCue Gill of TextFormations for her assistance in editing the text and revising translations.

This article investigates the history of cataloging medieval manuscripts in order to determine a paradigm for digital catalogs of the present. Inspired by the work of Suzanne Briet (1894–1989), it argues in favor of a culturally informed “documentation” that considers not only the complexity of medieval manuscripts as information objects, but also anticipates the diverse interests of users who depend on digital images and supporting metadata to access manuscripts as primary sources for research. Presented here is a faceted metadata structure that considers the premodernmanuscript as physical, textual, historical, as well as digital information. This approach is built upon various traditions for cataloging medieval manuscripts, from Cassiodorus in the sixth century to the electronic databases and digital catalogs of the present.

I. Velázquez y D. Espinosa (eds.), Epigraphy in the Digital Age Opportunities and Challenges in the Recording, Analysis and Dissemination of Inscriptions, 2021

The discipline of Epigraphy has been rapidly transformed in the last decade. This huge effort of digitisation has given place to a number of online databases that store mainly texts in Latin and Greek; but texts written in Palaeo-European languages and writings have not been yet, in my view, digitally treated and stored in a proper, satisfactory way, according to the FAIR Data Principles. Although lot of work has been done in this direction, an online publication of texts written in these ancient European languages has not been not carried out, since what has been done is not Findable (it lacks of URIs), Accessible (it is only readable by people; not by machines), Interoperable, or Reusable. In such a fragmentary corpus it becomes vital to collect every textual and extratextual information. However, the efforts invested in digitising Palaeo-European epigraphy latterly have been remarkable: Hesperia, LexLep, TIR, AELAW, and RIIG, among others, are some examples of the databases that currently playing an important role in the decipherment and better understanding of some of the languages and writings that were spoken in Europe before the Roman settlement.

Velázquez Soriano, I. Espinosa Espinosa, D. (eds.) Epigraphy in the Digital Age. Opportunities and Challenges in the Recording, Analysis and Dissemination of Inscriptions. Oxford: Archeopress. 2021. 201-213. ISBN 978-1-78969-987-6, 2021

This catalogue includes 230 funeral inscriptions of artisans linked to the trade or manufacture of high-quality jewelry, dresses, dyes and ointments. These products were commercialised among the elites of the capital and those select consumers who emulated the conduct of the Roman aristocracy by their inclusion within the same social group. A review of these craftsmen includes an analysis of the chronological framework that stretches from the end of the Republican period to the high Imperial period. This is also precisely the moment that denotes the change of era to the 1st century AD, when a greater number of inscriptions could be chronologically related. To understand the usefulness of the study of lapidary inscriptions as a direct testimony of the social and economic history of the Roman era we will use the example of the city’s collection of goldsmiths’ inscriptions (c. 30). The elaboration of the corpus represents a novel undertaking, for this is the first time that the information contained in the epigraphic databases is shared: EDCS, EDR, HD, EDB and TM. This enabled us to combine information from the inscriptions which were sometimes incomplete in the databases consulted. At first view these inscriptions do not offer much information, although a detailed study of them means we can incorporate new data into the investigation. The present work has the objective of showing those digital tools that allow us to gather and combine the inscriptions to study. It will also demonstrate how, through the use of fast and powerful web mapping visualizations (Carto, Tableau, Flourish, etc.) we can visualise the data in an interactive way. Finally, the creation of animated or interactive presentations of these works through online software such as Genially, Piktochart, Infogram, etc. facilitate understanding of our work to both readers alike.

CyberResearch on the Ancient Near East and Neighboring Regions Case Studies on Archaeological Data, Objects, Texts, and Digital Archiving, 2018

Recently there have been impressive efforts to digitalize ancient texts of the first millennium bce. Their digitalization has not only facilitated access to the information contained in these documents, but it has also given us a chance to use computational methods to analyze them.2 The question of how projects that digitize these texts interact with each other, however, has not been a domain of interest for most researchers.3 Yet for those who are trying to understand the history of international relations in the ancient Mediterranean

Digital Classics Online, 2019

This paper explores the methodological aspects and the results of linking individuals attested in ancient epigraphic sources. The article has three main parts, equally important: the first focuses on the sources and the methodology of the linkage process, the second presents the chosen linkage criteria and the results and the final one showcases a couple of examples, in order to illustrate how a 'digital' method can lead to reconstructing ancient people's lives. The conclusions of our endeavor, which we mainly regarded as a methodological experiment, are multi-folded. First of all, the process we undertook proves that record linkage operated on ancient epigraphic sources has a positive finality. Equally, the necessity of manual verification became very evident throughout the process.