“The authority of written documents...does not depend upon their pristine and unaltered condition. Quite the contrary - it is the capacity of the material documents to record change that makes them such believable witnesses.” Johanna Drucker∆

Para-textual Information: An interrogation of the non-textual properties of text based artifacts

Jessica Rogers – final poster presentation for MLS degree from The University of Iowa’s School of Library and Information Science, Fall 2015.

Analog

“An emergent property, materiality depends on how the work mobilizes its resources as a physical artifact as well as the user’s interactions with the work and the interpretive strategies she develops - strategies that

include physical manipulations as well as conceptual frameworks...materiality emerges from the dynamic interplay between the richness of a physically robust world and human intelligence as it

crafts this physicality to create meaning.” N. Katherine Hayles∆

Para-textual Properties of Analog Text-Based Artifacts1

1. substrate medium on with content will be printed or inscribed

paper, parchment, papyrus

2. imagetext or image;

content ‘carried’ on top of the substrate

printing, script, ink, graphite, woodcut, etc.

3. commodity artifact as conceptual and

physical entity of its component parts, what the

user interacts with

a book, scroll, telegram,

illuminated manuscript, diary,

etc.

1. physical medium on which signs are inscribed

flux reversals recorded on

magnetic tape, disk sectors

2. logicaldata as it is recognized and

interpreted by particular processes

binary composition of a Word .DOC file

3. conceptual the object we deal with in the real world

such as a digital photograph as it

appears prima facie on the screen

“Between tracks 23 and 33 we find evidence that at one time this disk had at least two

other games stored on it...Like a palimpsest, or books laced with marginalia and marks

from the readers who have previously owned them...and poured over by historians for

reading and writing, a floppy disk image can also reveal the hand of the reader or user.” –

Matthew Kirschenbaum∆

Para-textual Properties of Digital Text-Based Artifacts2

Extracting Meaning from Para-textual Elements

Open Access Tools

“The capacity to reveal hidden and lost text is of immense value to cultural heritage

institutions, providing the ability to confirm provenance, recover lost information, and allow researchers to confirm or disprove

theories of the techniques of artists, underpaintings, overwritten text, and non

destructive identification of inks and colorants.” France, Emery, Toth3

“Convergences between information technology data and information

management in advanced imaging systems illustrate common challenges

and opportunities across cultural heritage institutions. Preservation professionals , researchers, and scholars in libraries,

archives, and museums, share common needs for access to the original object, research images, integrated data, and information structures and systems.”

France, Emery, Toth3

Conclusions and Future Use

Using a simple UV light on this 11th century manuscript allowed for a more accurate identification of the scribal hand. I was able to correctly identify this hand as a German Protogothic Bookhand (GPB). Thus, the region and date of the creation of the manuscript could be more specifically pinpointed.

Digital

1Gary Frost. American Institute of Conservation mentorship. Fall 2013 - Spring 2014. 2Thibodeau, Kenneth. “Overview of Technological Approaches to Digital Preservation and Challenges in Coming Years.” Council on Library and Information Resources. 2001. Web. Oct. 2015.

∆ Kirschenbaum, Matthew. Mechanisms : new media and the forensic imagination. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2008.

3France, Fenella G., Doug Emery, and Michael B. Toth. “The Convergence of Information Technology, Data and Management in a Library Imaging Program.” Library Quarterly 80:1 (January 2010): 33–59.

Both retroReveal.org and BitCurator are available to the public at no cost. RetroReveal, hosted by the University of Utah, uses “web based image processing algorithms designed to help people discover hidden content” in analog paper-based artifacts. BitCurator, funded by several NEH grants, is a package of digital forensic tools adapted for use in libraries, archives, and museums, for the preservation and recovery of born-digital items.