lampeter sliseshare
TRANSCRIPT
Digitising Scholarly Resources for Classics
University of Lampeter, Department of Classics
Research Seminars (2012)
Simon Mahony [email protected]
All original content is licenced under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
Why do resources become digital?
• A research and publication tool
• To spread work more widely
• To allow access to material otherwise unavailable
– Heavily used material
– Storage medium is deteriorating
• Allow measurement and monitoring of deterioration
• e.g. monuments, paintings, manuscripts
• Reconstruct (and re-unite) texts
• Reunite artifacts (sculpture)
What can we digitise for publication?
• List is as long as your imagination:– Teaching slides (35 mm / Glass plate)
– Special Collections (Rare Books)
– Books (Aphrodisias and Rome)
– Documents (Bentham project)
– Newspapers (British Library)
– Manuscripts (Wellcome Trust)
– Photographs (Library of Congress)
– Museum catalogues (British Museum collections)
– Sculpture (UCL and British Museum)
– Papyri (Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri)
– Epigraphy (Inscriptions of Aphrodisias)
Rene Margritte: La trahison des images (image from Wikimedia)
Image: Simon Mahony
Legacy data
• Problems
• Problems
• Problems
• Generally not in the form that we wish
• Material
• Format (even when legacy material is digital)
• Metadata
MOLAS archive: image Simon Mahony
MOLAS archive: image Simon Mahony
A box of dictionary slips with excerpts for the word 'non'.
http://www.thesaurus.badw.de/english/index.htm
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
(cf. OED)
Image: Simon Mahony
Image: Simon Mahony
Post processing
• Optimisation vs enhancement
• Enhance the image: looks good to the eye
– Cropping / levels / colour etc
• Optimise the image: take account of the environment
in which it is delivered
– File format / file size / resolution
• See JISC Digital Media: guide to best practice
• Always archive uncompressed master files
• Always work on a copy not the original
• Document EVERYTHING
• Include ALL METADATA
Scanning devices?
• Smart phone
• Digital compact
• Digital SLR
• Flatbed scanner
• Sheet-feeder
• Document scanner
• 3D:
– Faro portable: http://www.faro.com/focus/us
– Arius fixed: http://www.arius3d.com/
Scanback camera
Image: Simon Mahony
Scanback camera
Image: Simon Mahony
Instant capture camera
Image: Simon Mahony
Image: Simon Mahony
Digitisation in action
Image: Simon Mahony
Digitisation in action
Image: Simon Mahony
Dedicated book scanner
Image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_Archive_book_scanner_1.jpg
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic licence.
Faro portable laser scanner
Image: Simon MahonyImage courtesy of Ryan
Baumann (Kentucky)
Image:
Simon
Mahony
Image: Simon Mahony
Image: Simon Mahony
Image: Simon Mahony
At the British Museum:
Department of Greek
and Roman Antiquities
Image courtesy of
Ryan Baumann
(Kentucky)
Image: EDUCE courtesy of Ryan Baumann (Kentucky)
EDUCE: Enhanced Digital Unwrapping for
Conservation and Exploration
"Often, any attempt to read fragile texts, such as
papyrus rolls, fundamentally and irreversibly alters
the structure of the object in which they are
contained. The EDUCE project is developing a
non-destructive volumetric scanning framework to
enable access to such objects without the need to
physically open them."
http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2008-02bs.html
Philodemus Project UCLA
• Carbonised scrolls from Herculaneum
• http://www.classics.ucla.edu/index.php/philodemus
With thanks for the image to Ryan Baumann (Kentucky)
With thanks for the image to Ryan Baumann (Kentucky)
Laser scanning at the Petrie Museum (UCL)
Image: Simon Mahony
Online text library
• Text and morphological tools
• Perseus Digital Library
Online communication and dissemination
• The Stoa Consortium
– EDUCE
– Pleiades
– Suda On Line
– Stoa Image Gallery
– Epidoc Guidelines
Images to text
• Optical Character Recognition
– Sheet feeder
– Time saver
– Accuracy? Typical < 99%
– Source material?
– Non-Latin characters?
• Re-keying
– Outsource
– Overcome difficulties with text
• Advantages and disadvantages of both
• Cost vs accuracy
Re-keying
• Labour intensive and so high cost
• Much higher accuracy than OCR
• Use non-Latin character language operators
• Double keying with software to compare
• Basic textual encoding – XML can be added at
low additional cost
Digitisation? User? Fit for purpose?
• Time consuming and costly operation
• Where (and who) are the users?
• What is it that they want? Have you asked?
• Costs:– Maintenance
– Sustainability
– upgrade
• Digitise once only or re-digitise every few years as it gets cheaper? (measure deterioration of source material) Access to material (manuscript)?
In-house or outsource?
• In-house
– Build up expertise
– small project
– rare material and fragile material
• Outsourcing text
– Economy of scale = lower cost per item/unit
– Send images rather than originals
• Much basic markup can be added automatically
Text or image or both?
Image © British Library www.bl.ac.uk
The Tyger, William
Blake. Songs of
Innocence and of
Experience, copy AA,
1826 (The Fitzwilliam
Museum): electronic
edition
object 42 (Bentley 42,
Erdman 42, Keynes
42)
Plan your digitisation project
• What is the need?
• What is your source material?
• What are your project goals?
• Who are your users?
• Understand your audience
• Why are you digitising?
• What value are you adding?
• What resources and money are available?
• Determine what method would be best
• Plan most effective route
• How will you make the product available?
• Above all: what is the need? If you cant answer this, why bother with the project?
Plan your project
• Excellent project?
• Low cost?
• Fast?
• Choose 2 as you cant have all three!
• Selection process:
– Everything (sometime easiest)
– Most used
• Understand your users
• Preservation and sustainability
Useful links
• Library Preservation at Harvard
– http://preserve.harvard.edu/resources/digital.html
• Cornell University Library: Moving Theory Intro
Practice: Digital Imaging Tutorial
– http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/
• Technical Advisory Service for Images
– Was www.tasi.ac.uk
• Now: JISC Digital Media
– http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/
Other scanning techniques
• PTM: Polynomial Texture Mapping
– Displays object under varying lighting conditions
– Name derives from developer of the algorithm
– Tom Malzbender of HP labs (2001)
• RTI: Reflectance Transformation Imaging
– Methods for surface reflectance information
– Fixed object and camera, varying lighting
– Implementation by using PTM
Image: Wessex Archaeology http://www.wessexarch.co.uk/computing/ptm
Lighting dome RTI
•fixed camera
•light array
Preparing to image Roman mummy portrait at British Museum (photo: Hembo Pagi)Image: Crowther & Piquette http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2011-01kp.html
See also: Reflectance Transformation Imaging Systems for Ancient Documentary Artefacts
project
Image: Crowther & Piquette http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2011-01kp.html
Cultural heritage training (photo: Hembo Pagi)
H-RTI
Highlight-based
RTI
•Fixed camera
•Handheld light
source
•Reflective sphere
Image: Crowther & Piquette http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2011-01kp.html
H-RTI
Egyptian
limestone
ostraca
Ägyptisches
Museum
Berlin
Image: Crowther & Piquette http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2011-01kp.html
(photo :Hembo Pagi)
H-RTI
Ashmolean
Oxford
Image: Crowther & Piquette http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2011-01kp.html
Highlight-based RTI onsite. Libyan desert rock art
H-RTI on Large Inscribed Surfaces
H-RTI of inscription in carved
relief above doorwayOld Kingdom tomb, QH35f
Dr. Kathryn E. Piquette ([email protected]) „Writing Matters“, 8 November 2012
• Reflectance Transformation Imaging
– RTI example (video): illuminated manuscript
• EDUCE project for the digital unrolling of scrolls
• The University of Kentucky Center for
Visualization & Virtual Environments
• Video clips:
– EDUCE: Reading the Unreadable
– EDUCE: Imaging the Herculaneum Scrolls
– Brent Seales: EDUCE: Non-invasive scanning for
classical materials
See also:
• Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM)
– HP Labs
• Reflection Transformation Imaging (RTI)
– Archaeological Computing Research Group SOTON
• Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) System for Ancient
Documentary Artefacts
– Digital Classicist seminar series
• Developing a Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI)
System for Inscription Documentation in Museum Collections
and the Field
The National Archives
Image: Simon Mahony
Doomsday Book
Image: Simon Mahony
Doomsday Book
Image: Simon Mahony
The Doomsday Disc
Image: Simon Mahony
Examples of digitisation projects at UCLDH
• Transcribe Bentham
• Reassembling the Thera Frescoes
• The Great Parchment Book
• Research students working with digitisation:
– Greta Franzini (Augustine's De Civitate Dei)
– Paul Gooding (Mass digitisation with BL)
– John Hindmarch (Science Museum collections)
– Kazim Pal (Great Parchment Book)
– Alejandro Giacometti (imaging ancient documents)
– Christina Vona (Documentation of 3D scanning)
Crowdsourcing
• Term often used when the content is generated or
added to by users of a resource rather than the
creators of that resource.
• Transcribe Bentham
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham
• See also the recent initiative by the AHRC: Crowd
Sourcing Study http://crowds.cerch.kcl.ac.uk
Gated crowdsourcing
• Core editing interface
• Multiple editorial boards
• Decentred, transparent, communal control
• Suda Online
• SoSOL community editing
• Pleiades,
– 'A community-built gazetter and graph of ancient places'
• Pelagios
– 'Enable Linked Ancient Geodata In Open Systems'
With thanks for the image to Ryan Baumann (Kentucky)
With thanks for the image to Ryan Baumann (Kentucky)
Hide the tech
• IDP: Papyrological Editor
– Tag-free editing (Leiden+)
– IDP video: Centre for Visualization & Virtual
Environments
• Transcribe Bentham
• Not an angle bracket in sight
• Committed transcribers
Print vs online
• Aphrodisias and Rome (SPRS 1982), J.Reynolds
– 230 inscriptions
– 30 B/W plates of photographs
• Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity (SPRS 1989) CWR
• Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity (ala2004)
– direct reprint of above (approx 20 more texts)
– approx 250 inscriptions
• Inscriptions of Aphrodisias (IAph2007)
– approx 1600 inscriptions
– 3,000+ images
Classics at Furman
• The British Library Papyrus of the Constitution of
the Athenians
• http://furman-classics.blogspot.co.uk/
The Greek Manuscripts Digitisation Project BL
• http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/About.aspx
National Library of Wales
• Prof Lorna Hughes
– Chair in Digital Collections
– ESF Network: NeDiMAH
– Network for Digital Methods in the Arts and Humanities
• The Welsh Experience of WW1 1914-1918
• The Snows of Yesteryear
Image: Simon Mahony
Bibliography
• Deegan and Tanner (2002) Digital Futures: Strategies for
the Information Age. Facet, London.
• Hughes L. (2004) Digitizing collections: strategic issues
for the information manager, Facet.
• Hughes, L. (2012). Evaluating & Measuring the Value,
Use and Impact of Digital Collections. Facet.
• Terras M. (2008) Digital Images for the Information
Professional, Ashgate.
Additional bibliography
• Stuart Dunn & Simon Mahony eds., Digital Classicist
Supplement: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies.
Wiley-Blackwell (forthcoming 2012-13)
• Baumann R., 'The Son of Suda On-Line'.
• Mahony S., 'HumSlides on Flickr: using an online
community platform to host and enhance an image
collection'
http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/User
:GabrielBodard
http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/User
:GabrielBodard
Simon Mahony
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dis/people/simonmahony
http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/User:SimonMahony