“The undiscover’d country”: digital special collections, scholarship, scale, and society For decades scholars have been using digital technologies to discover, locate, and view libraries' special collections. Increasingly these collections are available online, and their readers come from far beyond the academy, everywhere that people have access to the internet. Use of online resources is driven by curiosity and pleasure, as well as research. Digital tools and technologies with these collections—record, image, text—speed up traditional enquiry and enable entirely new questions to be imagined and answered. This talk gives a broad overview of the field, illustrated by case studies from the Bodleian Digital Library. This talk was given as a Friends of the Bodleian public lecture, in the Weston Library, University of Oxford, 1 December 2015.

1. Digital Special Collections, Scholarship, Scale, and Society
Friends Of The Bodleian Lecture, Weston Library, Oxford
Pip Willcox
Centre for Digital Scholarship, Bodleian Libraries
@pipwillcox
BodleianFirstFolio,Hamlet,f.OO5r,Histories,p.265.
Bodleian First Folio, title page.
1 December 2015
http://www.slideshare.net/PipWillcox/the-undiscoverd-country-digital-special-collections-scholarship-scale-and-society

2. Image: Paramount Pictures, 1991.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3881806848/tt0102975

3. Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
The other undiscovered country
Google search:“the undiscovered country”, 30 November 2015

4. The many forms of digital
Metadata
Image
Optical
Character
Recognition
Handwritten
Character
Recognition
Transcription
Encoded
Edited
Shared editions
Early English Books Online
Early Modern Letters Online
Google Books
Transcribe Bentham
EEBO Text Creation
Partnership
Poetical Essay
Digital Renaissance Editions
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Bodleian First Folio

5. Metadata:descriptions and provenance
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
By tedeytan from Washington, DC (Library of Congress Reading Room Open House 14) [CC
BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

6. Metadata:descriptions and provenance
✦ Information without context is just orphaned data
✦ Information with context is a path to knowledge
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

7. Metadata:descriptions and provenance
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
http://www.culturesofknowledge.org/
Detail from Pier Francesco Mola, ‘A Caricature of a Man with Four Flying
Letters’. V&A Museum, London
Iva Lelkova, Comenius Fellow—Robin Buning, Hartlib Fellow

8. Metadata + image
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
http://quartos.org/

9. What we don’t digitize
✦ Small
✦ Large
✦ Heavy
✦ Unwieldy
✦ Fragile
✦ Rare
✦ Old
✦ Uncut
✦ Foldouts
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
MiniatureLibrary,DepartmentOfRareBooks,BodleianLibrary.
Photograph:PipWillcox

10. What we can’t digitize
✦ Haptic: paper quality, heft, fragility
✦ Material: scale, layout, impression
✦ Experiential: smell, sound, aura
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Material Text Network, university of Oxford.
Mak, Bonnie. How the Page Matters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

11. Metadata + image + text
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
http://eebo.chadwyck.com
http://www.textcreationpartnership.org/
http://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
http://quartos.org/

12. Revolutionizing research
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
But the sad truth is that much of what it has taken me a lifetime to build
up by painful accumulation can now be achieved by a moderately
diligent student in the course of a morning.
Keith Thomas
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary

13. Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Digital
is more than
digitization
Scaling research
Heikenwaelder Hugo: Wikimedia Commons

14. Scaling research
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Reusable, recyclable, repurposable...*
Distant reading — CREME, Morph Adorner, DocuScope, Duhaime and Zimmer, Linguistic DNA
Close reading — Verse Miscellanies Online, F21, FORM: (Forms Online: Renaissance to Modern)
* David De Roure: https://twitter.com/dder/status/455707549593919490/photo/1

15. Linked Data
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
✦ A lingua franca for machines
✦ An inference engine
✦ Inferring implicit knowledge from explicitly declared facts
TerhiNurmikko-Fuller

16. Linked Data…in 60 seconds
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
✦ Uniform Resource Identifier—URIs as “words”
✦ Resource Description Framework—RDF as the “sentences”
✦ Ontologies as the “grammar”
TerhiNurmikko-Fuller
KevinPage

17. Linked Data…in 60 seconds
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
KevinPage

18. Linked Data…in 60 seconds
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
✦ Combining fields of scholarly expertise to make a complex web
✦ Making associations between information with common meaning
KevinPage

19. Enabling,connecting,augmenting
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
ElEPHãT: Early English Print in the HathiTrust
http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/projects/elephant
KevinPageandPipWillcox

20. The dangers of digitization
✦ Ethics
✦ Available ≠ accessible
✦ Your useful isn’t my useful
✦ Apparent homogeneity
✦ Restricted access to material
✦ Nil returns ≠ no data
✦ Image set ≠ facsimile or surrogate but “avatar”
— Ségolène Tarte
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
DOI: 10.1093/llc/fqr010

21. Reflect
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Bodleian First Folio, Troilus and Cressida, f.¶¶1r,Tragedies, http://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/.

22. Share
✦ “The coolest thing to do with your data will be thought of by
someone else.”
✦ “The set of useful things one can do with a given informational resource is always
larger than can be done (or even thought of) by one individual or group.”
Rufus Pollock and Jo Walsh
Open Knowledge Foundation
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2007/05/xtech_day_3_rufus_pollock_and_.php

23. 2012:Sprint for Shakespeare
HELP US OPEN THE BODLEIAN’S FIRST COLLECTED
EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS TO THE WORLD
Shakespeare’s First Folio is one of the greatest treasures in the
Bodleian collection, and we would like your help opening it up for
anyone anywhere in the world to enjoy exploring its pages. Now,
in the year of the Cultural Olympiad, we invite Shakespeare lovers
and Bodleian supporters to join our Sprint campaign to digitize and
publish our First Folio online for the benefit of
everyone, from schoolchildren to scholars.
By making a contribution of any size – from as little
as £20 per page – your support will enable us to
publish a speech, a scene, an act or even a whole
play of the First Folio online, on a specially
created website, which will inspire readers
today and in the future.
The Sprint for Shakespeare campaign aims
to raise £20,000 through a large number of
donations of all sizes.Any surplus beyond the
target will go towards future online projects to
open up the Bodleian collections.
All supporters of this campaign will be recognised
on a special page on this website, with the
opportunity to dedicate their gift to
someone who inspires them.
Like the patrons and
subscribers of books
in the past, the names
will live on with this
digitized book through
this website.
FOR
Shakeßpeare
TO FIND OUT
MORE AND LEARN
HOW TO BE INVOLVED
VISIT OUR WEBSITE
http://shakespeare.
bodleian.ox.ac.uk
B
D
L
S
S
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

24. Social augmentation
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
✦ The Zooniverse
✦ EEBO-TCP hackfest
✦ The Great War Archive
✦ Digital Manuscripts Toolkit
✦ DIY Digitization

25. Multilateral collaboration
Photograph: PipWillcox
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
✦ Knowledge of analogue books and
digital methods: tools to
understanding digital artefacts
✦ Augmenting our knowledge and
understanding of the human record
✦ Libraries at the heart of research:
supporting, facilitating, sharing
knowledge
✦ The analogue—digital continuum:
sustainable, creative, flexible

26. Multilateral collaboration
Photograph: PipWillcox
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Quod feliciter vortat academici Oxoniens
bibliothecam hanc vobis reipublicaeque
literatorum T.B.P.
Thomas Bodley has built this library
for you and for the Republic of the
Learned. May the gift turn out well.

27. References and acknowledgements
✦ With particular thanks to: David De Roure, Christine Madsen, Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller, Kevin Page, Judith
Siefring, Emma Stanford, Ségolène Tarte, Daniel Wakelin, the TORCH Material Text Network
Bodleian Libraries
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
✦ Anon, A full and true relation of the elephant that is brought over into England from the Indies, and landed at London, August 3d. 1675. Giving likewise a true account of the wonderful
nature, understanding, breeding, taking and taming of elephants (London, 1675). Via EEBO: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?
ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:184581.
✦ Bodleian First Folio: http://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
✦ CREME VARD: http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/vard/about/
✦ Coryate, Thomas, Thomas Coriate traueller for the English vvits: greeting From the court of the Great Mogul, resident at the towne of Asmere, in easterne India (London: 1616). Via
EEBO — http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:9182
✦ Cultures of Knowledge: http://www.culturesofknowledge.org/
✦ David De Roure, ‘The R Dimensions’. Via Twitter — https://twitter.com/dder/status/455707549593919490/photo/1. Digital Manuscripts Toolkit: http://
dmt.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
✦ DIY Digitization: https://www.flickr.com/groups/bodspecialcollections; http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/digital/2015/09/28/diy-digitization/
✦ Docuscope: https://www.cmu.edu/hss/english/research/docuscope.html
✦ Douglas Duhaime and Mary Erica Zimmer: http://douglasduhaime.com/blog/co-citation-networks-in-the-eebo-tcp-corpus
✦ Early English Books Online: http://eebo.chadwyck.com
✦ EEBO-TCP hackfest: http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/digital/2015/04/22/early-english-books-hackfest/
✦ ElEPHãT: http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/projects/elephant
✦ Folger Shakespeare Library: http://www.folger.edu/
✦ FORM: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/centres/lsc/people/staff/academic/lizscottb.aspx
✦ Great War Archive: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa
✦ Linguistic DNA: http://hridigital.shef.ac.uk/linguistic-dna
✦ Mak, Bonnie. How the Page Matters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.
✦ MorphAdorner: http://morphadorner.northwestern.edu/
✦ Pollock, Rufus and Jo Walsh. Open Knowledge Foundation: http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2007/05/xtech_day_3_rufus_pollock_and_.php
✦ Shakespeare Quartos Archive: http://quartos.org/
✦ Sprint for Shakespeare: http://shakespeare.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
✦ Tarte, S.M. ‘Papyrological Investigations: Transferring Perception and Interpretation into the Digital World’ in Lit Linguist Computing, 26(2):233–47, 2011. DOI: 10.1093/llc/
fqr010.
✦ Text Creation Partnership: http://www.textcreationpartnership.org/
✦ Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
✦ Verse Miscellanies Online: http://versemiscellaniesonline.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
✦ Zooniverse: https://www.zooniverse.org/