Lampeter sliseshare

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

– [email protected]

– 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

[email protected]

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dis/people/simonmahony

http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/User:SimonMahony