A progress report on the digitization of Bernard Picart "Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde" and the European Enlightenment

1. At the Interface of
Religion and
Cosmopolitanism:
Bernard Picart’s
Cérémonies et coutumes
religieuses de tous les
peuples du monde
(1723-1743)
and the European
Enlightenment
A conference at the Getty Research Institute and the Clark
Library organized by Margaret C. Jacob, UCLA, and Wijnand
Mijnhardt, Universiteit Utrecht

2. “The field of knowledge is the common
property of all mankind “
Thomas Jefferson
(from a letter to Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War June 22, 1807)

3. “Although not always well appreciated,
a strong and inextricable link exists
between the fundamental mission of our
cultural institutions and a common ethical
imperative to nurture and secure tolerant,
secular democracy.”
-- Tom Moritz
“The cultural commons: democracy and digital progress”,
First Draft Fall, 2007, No.6: pp.16-21

4. http://www.acls.org/cyberinfra
structure/OurCulturalCommo
nwealth.pdf
© 2006 American Council of Learned Societies

5. “Infrastructure” ?
“The infrastructure of scholarship was built over centuries. It includes:
 diverse collections of primary sources in libraries, archives, and museums;
 the bibliographies, searching aids, citation systems, and concordances that
make that information retrievable;
 the standards that are embodied in cataloging and classification systems;
 the journals and university presses that distribute the information;
and
 the editors, librarians, archivists, and curators who link the operation of this
structure to the scholars who use it.
[ And it includes the lineage and heritability of knowledge as represented by the
convention of citation and the censure of plagiarism... – tdm]
All of these elements have extensions or analogues in cyberinfrastructure, at
least in the cyberinfrastructure that is required for humanities and social
sciences.”
http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/OurCulturalCommonwealth.pdf

6. “Cyberinfrastructure” ?
“The 2003 National Science Foundation report
Revolutionizing Science and Engineering through
Cyberinfrastructure (hereafter referred to as the “Atkins
report,” after Dan Atkins, who chaired the committee that
produced it) described cyberinfrastructure as a ‘layer of
enabling hardware, algorithms, software,
communications, institutions, and personnel’ that lies
between a layer of “base technologies . . . the
integrated electro-optical components of computation,
storage, and communication” and a layer of “software
programs, services, instruments, data, information,
knowledge, and social practices applicable to specific
projects, disciplines, and communities of practice.”
http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/OurCulturalCommonwealth.pdf

7. “Digital Scholarship” ?
“a) Building a digital collection of information for
further study and analysis
b) Creating appropriate tools for collection-building
c) Creating appropriate tools for the analysis and
study of collections
d) Using digital collections and analytical tools to
generate new intellectual products [“knowledge”]
e) Creating authoring tools for these new
intellectual products, either in traditional forms or
in digital form “
http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/OurCulturalCommonwealth.pdf

8. • Comprehensiveness of access to all
resources is improving
• Parity of access is improving
• The efficiency of scholarship is improving
• New primary sources are becoming
available
• New analytical tools are becoming
available
AND SO...?

9. “The Picart Project”

10. What? and How?:
Scanning and OCR’ing
• French, English, Dutch and German texts were identified at GRI,
UCLA and the Huntington Library
• Agreements were concluded with all (Utrecht was involved in
discussions as well...)
• Chet Grycz / “Libraries without Walls” (Oakland) was engaged in the
digitization process
• Actual scanning was conducted at the GRI Visual Media Services lab
• Text processing occurred both at Lw/oW and GRI – this included
“OCR” (Optical Character Recognition) processing at GRI
• Problems occurred: [in French edition: 327/ 4219 ]
– in the scanning process (initial scanning rate 3-5 seconds per page)
• Missing pages
• Color bar left in image
– In the post-processing:
• File naming (Major problem affecting our ability to do efficient QC)
• Over-cropping

12. Record ID: 975568
UCLA Libraries and
Collections
Picart, Bernard
The ceremonies and religious
customs of the various
nations of the known world...
designed by Bernard Picart...
faithfully translated into
English by a gentleman some
time since of St. John's
College in Oxford
London, 1733-1739
Vol. 1, page 17

13. Pages/ Files
French - 4219 pages/ tiffs1
206.1 GBytes
English - 3372 pp./tiffs, 368.7 GBs
German - 1247 pp./tiffs, 136 GBs
Dutch - 3379 pp./tiffs, 370 GBs
TOTAL - 12217 tiffs, 1080.8 GBs
(1+ Terabytes)
1. “TIFF” = “Transfer Image File Format”, a standard digital image format

16. Picart_English_V1__0026b_0042.txt - Notepad
1
upon RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 17
As to bending the Knee in Adoration of the Deity, this too is one of the most
antient Customs in the World 5 yet I cannot forbear observing to my Reader, that
St. Basil discovered a Type both of Sin and Grace in this Act of Devotion. We bend the
Knee, faith he, and this reprefenteth our Fall by Sin -y we afterwards rife again, and this
is a 'Type of the divine Mercy that raises us again, and gives us Assurance to look up to
Heaven. The Justness of this Type will strengthen, we hope, the Minds of all well-
disposed Persons against the depraved Notions of those who would destroy all such Re-
presentations for the Advancement of Reason in their Stead. But let us go on with our
Enquiry into the Customs established in religious Worship. In former Times, during
divine Worship, the Face was turned towards the East. Many Passages from the Antients
might be quoted to prove this Assertion: But it will be sufficient, I presume, barely to
name the Authors in whose a Works they are to be found. Vitruvius has laid it down for
a Maxim, that a Temple should be disposed in such Manner, b that those who go to
sacrifice at the Altar, may turn themselves to the East. The Altar too (according to Vi-
truvius) ought to be turned towards that Part of the World. Probably the Origin of this
Custom c is'owing to the Idolatry of those who first of all worshipped the Sun an Ido-
latry which obtains to this Day, d amongst the East Indians and Americans. St. Austin"
has very plainly proved, that the primitive Christians borrowed the Custom of their
turning to the East from the Heathens. This Custom is come down to us, and still
observed amongst the Roman Catholicks: But the antient Jews, on the contrary, turned
themselves towards the West, that they might not copy the Idolatry of the Heathens-
When they were on a Journey, or obliged to live without the Walls of ''Jerusalem, they
used to pray with their Faces towards that City. As for the Mahometans, they turn
to the South, upon Account of the City of Mecca, where stands the famous Sepulchre
of Mahomet.
Sample OCR result from English Text

17. “Collaborative Scholarship”?
• Given the relatively short timeline for
implementation a complete and thorough
evaluation of possible software applications was
not completed
• Confluence was selected on the basis of its
reputation and its established user base
• The decision was taken to make the complete
set of plates of the French edition available in
Confluence

19. http://griwiki.getty.edu/confluence/login.action
griread / griread

20. The Getty “TEAMS” Application?
Digital Assets Management System

23. • French and English are currently available as searchable
pdf’s (Dutch soon available – German currently
“problematic”)
• Pending final agreements, all participants may have
available all versions of the text for research use
• GRI will retain a “snapshot” of the site as of December,
2007
• In concept, UCLA will maintain and continue the site
(question of continuity in transition...?)
AND NOW...?

24. GRI Staff Contributors
• Karim Boughida
• David Brafman
• Debra Canter
• John Kiffe
• Tom Moritz
• Leah Prescott
• Mary Sackett
• Joe Shubitowski

25. A Basic Reference:
Our Cultural Commonwealth: The report of the
American Council of Learned Societies
Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the
Humanities and Social Sciences
© 2006 American Council of Learned Societies
http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/OurCulturalCommonwealth.pdf