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Digital Manuscripts and Interoperability Across Repositories

Benjamin Albritton, Stanford University LibrariesRobert Sanderson, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Workshop: Medieval Cultures on the Web. Interoperability Through Text and Manuscript Databases

Florence, 9 March 2012

Overview

• Background• From Silo to Interoperable Repository: Interoperability at the Image

Level• Medieval Manuscripts: The Complex Use-Case• SharedCanvas• Implementation and Demos

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

Current State: A World of Silos

Roman de la Rose Parker on the Web e-codices And so on…

Silos: What you can do

Parker on the Web

• 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

Silos: What you can’t do

Parker on the Web

• 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

Defining Interoperability

• Break down silos• Separate data from applications• Share data models and

programming interfaces• Enable interactions at the tool and

repository level

Designing Modular Repositories and Tools

Image Data (Canonical)

Image Viewer

Discovery

Annotation

Metadata (Canonical)

Transcription

Image Viewer

Image Analysi

s

Discovery

Tool X?

Repository

Repository User Interface

3rd-Party Tools

Designing Modular Repositories and Tools

Image Data (Canonical)

Image Viewer

Discovery

Annotation

Metadata (Canonical)

Transcription

Image Viewer

Image Analysi

s

Discovery

Tool X?

Repository

Repository User Interface

3rd-Party Tools

Designing Modular Repositories and Tools

Image Data (Canonical)

Image Viewer

Discovery

Annotation

Metadata (Canonical)

Transcription

Image Viewer

Image Analysi

s

Discovery

Tool X?

Infrastructure: Library and Application Interoperability

• Digital “stacks”• Repository manifest• Application programming interface• Linked-data technologies (SharedCanvas data model)

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

The Information-Dense Page

Working with Surrogates

Naïve Approach: Transcribe Images Directly

Naïve Approach: Multiple Representations

CCC 26 f. iiiR

Naïve Approach: Multiple Representations

CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open

Naïve Approach: Multiple Representations

CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open

Naïve Approach: Multiple Representations

CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open f. iiiV

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

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.

Open Annotation Model

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

OAC Annotations to Paint Images

OAC Annotations to Paint Text

Multiple Images: Morgan 804

Transcription: Morgan 804

Fragments: Cod Sang 1394

Musical Manuscripts: Parker CCC 008

Missing Pages: Parker CCC 286

Rebinding: BNF f.fr. 113-116

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

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

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/1104.2925Slides: http://slidesha.re/

Acknowledgements DMSTech Group: http://dmstech.group.stanford.edu/Open Annotation Collaboration: http://www.openannotation.org/