The document presents a model called SharedCanvas for digitally annotating and analyzing medieval song manuscripts. It uses a "canvas" to represent manuscript pages and open annotation to allow layers of images, text, and scholarly commentary. Demos showcase adding transcriptions, music notation, and media to manuscript images. The model aims to distribute content across repositories while providing consistent access and encouraging tool development for medieval song scholarship.

1. Medieval Song on the Web
Image, Text, Media, and Annotation
Robert Sanderson
rsanderson@lanl.gov
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Benjamin Albritton
blalbrit@stanford.edu
Stanford University
http://lib.stanford.edu/dmm
http://www.shared-canvas.org/
This presentation arises from work that is
funded, in part, by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation
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2. Overview
• Medieval Song in the Digital Environment
• Annotation of web-based resources
• Motivation and light framework overview
• Use-cases and demos
• Possible next-steps for song projects wanting to use
digital tools and resources
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3. Describing Song
• How to adequately discuss a complex, compound entity?
• Text or texts
• Music (often multiple simultaneous voices)
• Performance
• Manuscript witnesses
• Mise-en-page and other issues of layout
• Variants
• Decorations
• The interactions and relationships between these
elements
• Beyond the individual scholar
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4. From Analog to Digital
Narrative Argument
Transcribed
Example
Analytical
Reduction
Explanatory
Annotation
Describing Example
Jennifer Bain, “Theorizing the Cadence in the Music of Machaut,”
Journal of Music Theory 47/2 (2003), 334-35
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5. Using and Presenting Digital Facsimiles
Some Requirements:
• Gather information from various sources
• Multiple layers of commentary
• Ability to provide context for examples
• Include all of the data that supports the argument
• Allow feedback
• Include many types of media
• Possibility of non-linearity
• Permanence
• And… ?
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6. 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
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7. Vision
A collaborative future:
• Rich landscape of interconnected
repositories of images, texts, media
• Seamless user interfaces disconnected
from the repositories
• Improve efficiency and usability through
open, shared development
• Requirements:
• Shared data model
• Shared services for facsimiles and
scholarly data
BNF f.fr 113, folio 1 recto
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8. Naïve Approach: Transcribe Images Directly
But how to align multiple images, pages without images, fragments… ?!
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9. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR
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10. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open
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11. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open
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12. Naïve Approach:
Multiple Representations
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open f. iiiV
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13. Canvas Paradigm
• A Canvas is an empty space in which to build up a display
• A SharedCanvas's top left and bottom right corners correspond to
the equivalent corners of a folio
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14. 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.
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15. Open Annotation Model
• Annotation (a document)
• Body (the ‘comment’ of the annotation)
• Target (the resource the Body is ‘about’)
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16. OAC Annotations to Paint Images
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17. OAC Annotations to Paint Text
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18. Transcription: Morgan 804
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19. Transcription: Morgan 804
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20. Demo 1: Layering Image and Text
• http://shared-canvas.org/impl/demo1
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21. Musical Manuscripts: Parker CCC 008
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22. Demo 2: Beyond Text (Music and Media)
• http://shared-canvas.org/impl/demo2
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23. Demo 3: Transcribing in the Digital Environment
• Work with interoperable repositories
• Use tools designed for the task:
• Transcription
• Annotation
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24. 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
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25. Conclusion: Next Steps
Project-centric Approach:
• Identify research goals
• Encourage interoperability
• Use existing tools or develop new modules in the interoperable
environment
• What is specific to song study?
• What is general?
• Build teams that include digital repositories, software developers, and
scholars
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26. Thank You
Robert Sanderson
rsanderson@lanl.gov
azaroth42@gmail.com
@azaroth42
Benjamin Albritton
blalbrit@stanford.edu
@bla222
Web: http://lib.stanford.edu/dmm
http://www.shared-canvas.org/
Paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2925
Slides: http://slidesha.re/oJnmGe
Acknowledgements
DMSTech Group: http://dmstech.group.stanford.edu/
Open Annotation Collaboration: http://www.openannotation.org/
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