Presentation for the workshop: Medieval Cultures on the Web. Interoperability Through Text and Manuscript Databases. Florence, 7-9 March 2012

1. Digital Manuscripts and
Interoperability Across Repositories
Benjamin Albritton, Stanford University Libraries
Robert Sanderson, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Workshop: Medieval Cultures on the Web. Interoperability
Through Text and Manuscript Databases
Florence, 9 March 2012

2. Overview
• Background
• From Silo to Interoperable Repository: Interoperability at the Image
Level
• Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case
• SharedCanvas
• Implementation and Demos

3. Digital Manuscript Interoperability for
Tools and Repositories
Overview:
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded numerous manuscript digitization
projects over several decades
All had in common:
• Inability to share data across silos to satisfy scholarly use
• Inability to leverage existing infrastructure
• No sustainability model for data or access
Goal:
• Interoperability between repositories and tools

4. Current State: A World of Silos
Roman de la Rose Parker on the Web e-codices And so on…

5. Silos: What you can do
• Access data from a single repository
• Use the tools that repository supports
• See images in the way that repository allows
• See curated descriptions of the material
• See approved additional material
• Search within a single repository
• Browse within a single repository
Parker on the Web

6. Silos: What you can’t do
• Access data from any other repositories
• Use any other tools
• See images any other way
• Contribute or correct descriptions (often)
• Add additional material or comments (often)
• Search across repositories unless federated
search has been implemented
Parker on the Web

7. Defining Interoperability
• Break down silos
• Separate data from applications
• Share data models and
programming interfaces
• Enable interactions at the tool and
repository level

8. Designing Modular Repositories and Tools
3rd-Party Annotation
Image Image
Discovery Tool X?
Transcription Analysis Viewer
Tools
Repository
User Image Viewer Discovery
Interface
Metadata (Canonical)
Repository
Image Data (Canonical)

9. Designing Modular Repositories and Tools
3rd-Party Annotation
Image Image
Discovery Tool X?
Transcription Analysis Viewer
Tools
Repository
User Image Viewer Discovery
Interface
Metadata (Canonical)
Repository
Image Data (Canonical)

10. Designing Modular Repositories and Tools
Image Image
Transcription Annotation Discovery Tool X?
Analysis Viewer
Image Viewer Discovery
Metadata (Canonical)
Image Data (Canonical)

11. Infrastructure: Library and Application Interoperability
• Digital “stacks”
• Repository manifest
• Application programming interface
• Linked-data technologies (SharedCanvas data model)

12. Motivating Questions
Many implicit assumptions:
• What is a Manuscript?
• What is its relation to a facsimile?
• What is the relation of a transcription of
a facsimile to the original object?
What does this mean for digital tools?
• How do we rethink digital facsimiles in a
shared, distributed, global space?
• How do we enable collaboration and
encourage engagement?
Ms MurF: 10.5076/e-codices-kba-0003

13. The Information-Dense Page

14. Working with Surrogates

15. Naïve Approach: Transcribe Images Directly

16. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR

17. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open

18. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open

19. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open f. iiiV

20. Canvas Paradigm
• A Canvas is an empty space in which to build up a display
• Makes explicit that the image is a surrogate

21. Technology: Open Annotation
• http://www.openannotation.org/
• Focus on interoperable sharing of annotations
• Web-centric and open, not locked down silos
• Create, consume and interact in different environments
• “Annotation”
• Scholarly commentary about the manuscript
• Painting resources on the SharedCanvas
• Hardest part: Define what an Annotation is!
• "Aboutness" is key to distinguish from general metadata
A document that describes how one resource is about
one or more other resources, or part thereof.

22. Open Annotation Model
• Annotation (a document)
• Body (the ‘comment’ of the annotation)
• Target (the resource the Body is ‘about’)

23. OAC Annotations to Paint Images

24. OAC Annotations to Paint Text

25. Multiple Images: Morgan 804

26. Transcription: Morgan 804

27. Fragments: Cod Sang 1394

28. Musical Manuscripts: Parker CCC 008

29. Missing Pages: Parker CCC 286

30. Rebinding: BNF f.fr. 113-116

31. Implementations
Demos!
• Morgan 804
• http://www.shared-canvas.org/impl/demo1/
• Worlde's Blisce
• http://www.shared-canvas.org/impl/demo2/
• Selected Walters Museum Manuscripts
• http://www.shared-canvas.org/impl/demo4/
• T-PEN: Transcription in an interoperable environment
• http://t-pen.org/TPEN

32. Summary
Model:
Canvas paradigm provides a coherent solution to modeling the layout of
medieval manuscripts
• Annotations, and Collaboration, at the heart of the model
Implementation:
• Distribution across repositories for images, text, commentary
• Consistent methods to access content from many repositories
• Encourages tool development by experts in the field
The SharedCanvas model implemented by distributed repositories brings the
humanist's primary research objects to their desktop in a powerful, extensible
and interoperable fashion

33. Thank You
Benjamin Albritton
blalbrit@stanford.edu
@bla222
Robert Sanderson
rsanderson@lanl.gov
azaroth42@gmail.com
@azaroth42
Web: http://lib.stanford.edu/dmm
http://www.shared-canvas.org/
Paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2925
Slides: http://slidesha.re/
Acknowledgements
DMSTech Group: http://dmstech.group.stanford.edu/
Open Annotation Collaboration: http://www.openannotation.org/