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+--- Thread: Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize (/thread-3158.html)
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Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize - Mark Knowles - 17-04-2020
Given the recent post about the Archive of the Dukes of Burgundy being digitised I am curious as to people's opinions as to which digitisation projects are most likely to advance Voynich research. I leave this a fairly open question as to whether there are specific manuscripts or specific archives(the Vatican Archive would obviously be a very big ask) that people think would make a real difference. I also am curious if we can speculate about time scales for these documents to be digitised 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 100+ years. Also do we think that finding the right document(s) will be the key to understanding the Voynich.(If Nick Pelling's block-paradigm really exists then that could constitute such a document)
RE: Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize - -JKP- - 17-04-2020
All of them. Many many manuscripts ended up thousands of miles from where they originated.
And many many manuscripts were written by people living far from their ancestral homes. Scholars, in particular, moved around a lot. Not only to go to school, but to find "professional" jobs (patronage from kings and emperors).
RE: Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize - nickpelling - 17-04-2020
The reason I keep talking about the block paradigm is that I genuinely think this will be the means by which we actively find a Voynich equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. I'm very skeptical about single word cribs, and even about 'pure' cryptology and 'pure' linguistics.
RE: Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize - Mark Knowles - 17-04-2020
(17-04-2020, 07:55 PM)nickpelling Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The reason I keep talking about the block paradigm is that I genuinely think this will be the means by which we actively find a Voynich equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. I'm very skeptical about single word cribs, and even about 'pure' cryptology and 'pure' linguistics.
I genuinely think now as I thought before that you have a strong case. What you have suggested is very sound and a clear idea of a road map to a complete translation of Voynichese. I just have no idea of the likelihood of such a block-paradigm being found in the next 5 years, 20 years or 50 years. 'pure' cryptology and 'pure' linguistics based decipherment seem hard to imagine without some concrete tangible link to specific meanings. I, as you know, am more open to single word cribs and until a block-paradigm appears it at least gives one something to try to work with.
What I like about your block-paradigm goal is that it is a clear and direct approach to moving towards decipherment rather than being some kind of scatter shot approach to understanding the Voynich with no clear idea as to how to really progress research. Clearly in your quest for specific manuscripts/documents you have a strategy for finding such a block-paradigm. I haven't spent nearly enough time investigating your document quest to form an opinion as to how far or near you might be from locating such a document.
RE: Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize - arca_libraria - 17-04-2020
The Vatican library team are working on their digitisation project at an astonishing rate - they have so much stuff so it's going to take them at least another decade, but for a library that seems to exist outside of time and space, their digitisation efforts put most other places to shame.
I think that a related problem is that many library websites have terrible search interfaces and manuscript browsers so it can be really hard to quickly find a manuscript and study it, but the budget for developing these tools, or even converting pre-existing photo assets into a format and hierarchy that can be used by one of the new interfaces takes a lot of time and money. I have so many complaints about so many libraries and their terrible manuscript interfaces, but since I would like to visit these places in the future, I will have to be silent*.
Would it be useful to maintain a thread of manuscripts forum-members are interested in that have not yet been digitised? Then as stuff comes online we can update the thread.
*Please please please don't let the Wellcome Library develop another manuscript catalogue/image browser/search tool ever again under any circumstances. They appear to have 5? Or 6? They are not linked. They all have different info. They do not use the same shelf-mark formats. Some images only exist in one of the 5 (6?) systems. There is barely any metadata or item info available in their main image repository so good luck identifying anything when you find an image that you're interested in. Please could they spend their enormous amounts of money on fixing what they currently have rather than developing another new tool, and abandoning it 18 months later. Please.
RE: Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize - Mark Knowles - 17-04-2020
(17-04-2020, 09:28 PM)arca_libraria Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The Vatican library team are working on their digitisation project at an astonishing rate - they have so much stuff so it's going to take them at least another decade, but for a library that seems to exist outside of time and space, their digitisation efforts put most other places to shame.
I think that a related problem is that many library websites have terrible search interfaces and manuscript browsers so it can be really hard to quickly find a manuscript and study it, but the budget for developing these tools, or even converting pre-existing photo assets into a format and hierarchy that can be used by one of the new interfaces takes a lot of time and money. I have so many complaints about so many libraries and their terrible manuscript interfaces, but since I would like to visit these places in the future, I will have to be silent*.
Would it be useful to maintain a thread of manuscripts forum-members are interested in that have not yet been digitised? Then as stuff comes online we can update the thread.
*Please please please don't let the Wellcome Library develop another manuscript catalogue/image browser/search tool ever again under any circumstances. They appear to have 5? Or 6? They are not linked. They all have different info. They do not use the same shelf-mark formats. Some images only exist in one of the 5 (6?) systems. There is barely any metadata or item info available in their main image repository so good luck identifying anything when you find an image that you're interested in. Please could they spend their enormous amounts of money on fixing what they currently have rather than developing another new tool, and abandoning it 18 months later. Please.
I am with you on the interfaces, yeah they tend to be pretty terrible. It would be wonderful if someday there was a shared archive interface amongst numerous different archives from different countries. It would be great just to be able to search easily and effectively across say all European and North America Archives in one reliable search. Browsing by date and location of origin rather than by archive would be nice. Convenient downloading would be nice. Anyway, I can dream!
I agree about keeping updated on new digitisation could be useful, given that many Voynich researchers spend a lot of time researching historical documents online.
RE: Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize - Koen G - 17-04-2020
(17-04-2020, 09:28 PM)arca_libraria Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think that a related problem is that many library websites have terrible search interfaces and manuscript browsers so it can be really hard to quickly find a manuscript and study it
This... I fully understand that this is costly and harder than it looks, and I really appreciate all those places putting their manuscripts out there.
But it is a missed opportunity that there is not more uniformity in these manuscript viewers. For example, if you're looking for a specific image, you really need thumbnail views. I cannot understand why the BL doesn't have this function, for example. In my opinion, BNF for example does a much better job.
If there was a payed service that streamlines all these viewers, I would subscribe to it. I would also imagine that for institutions it could be more efficient to share their knowledge and cooperate instead of all developing and implementing their own tools.
RE: Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize - -JKP- - 17-04-2020
The repositories could greatly help us AND help themselves if they would simply add thumbnails.
Some have them but many don't. If there are no thumbnails, you can easily waste 40 minutes going through every folio and not find anything and this puts a tremendous extra load on the repository's server. These are cycles that could be used by someone else or, if not used, could speed up load times for other users.
RE: Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize - arca_libraria - 17-04-2020
(17-04-2020, 10:16 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This... I fully understand that this is costly and harder than it looks, and I really appreciate all those places putting their manuscripts out there.
But it is a missed opportunity that there is not more uniformity in these manuscript viewers. For example, if you're looking for a specific image, you really need thumbnail views. I cannot understand why the BL doesn't have this function, for example. In my opinion, BNF for example does a much better job.
If there was a payed service that streamlines all these viewers, I would subscribe to it. I would also imagine that for institutions it could be more efficient to share their knowledge and cooperate instead of all developing and implementing their own tools.
I agree, the BNF manuscript catalogue and image viewer is excellent. The Vatican, Bodleian and St Gallen all have really good manuscript digitisations too if you ignore the giant watermarks on the Vatican images. The National Library of Russia is really good too from the little I've seen of it. I can't read Cyrillic well enough to fix my mistakes, so if I get lost it can be almost impossible to fix my search results and find what I'm looking for.
The BL is absolutely dreadful. They have three different text catalogues and two different image browers/digitisation phases. Their image browser doesn't have a thumbnail view, but it's one of the quickest out there for turning pages and zooming in. The BL search function has two modes of operation: it will either return 9000 items of which 3 are relevant and they're on pages 4, 16, and 92 of the results, or it will pretend it has never heard of books as either a concept or a physical object.
I was surprised by how old-fashioned the KBR manuscript viewer is, but it fits in with their earlier digitisations. On the KBR website there is no thumbnail view for a lot of the manuscripts, right-click > open in new tab is completely broken, the default manuscript viewer is tiny unless you let it expand to full screen, there is no catalogue/metadata easily available, no image rotation and it's so slow.
A lot of people are trying to make the streamlined-manuscript-viewer happen, but it's a very long way from success. There's a framework known as the IIIF (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) and a lot of libraries have committed to making their digitisations match the IIIF-standard over the next 10 years. Sometimes existing digital images can be quickly updated to meet the IIIF standard, but unfortunately it is usually a very slow and laborious process that cannot be fully automated. A lot of newer digital images are IIIF-compliant and can be viewed in something like Mirador for even further analysis, but it doesn't solve the problem of the images on the terrible websites being stuck there with no way to get them out or improve them.
RE: Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize - -JKP- - 18-04-2020
(17-04-2020, 11:03 PM)arca_libraria Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
...
The BL is absolutely dreadful. They have three different text catalogues and two different image browers/digitisation phases. Their image browser doesn't have a thumbnail view, but it's one of the quickest out there for turning pages and zooming in. The BL search function has two modes of operation: it will either return 9000 items of which 3 are relevant and they're on pages 4, 16, and 92 of the results, or it will pretend it has never heard of books as either a concept or a physical object.
...
This is exactly my experience, as well. You can know the exact shelf number and if you go through regular search, good luck finding it. Either too many hits or none. The only way to get at it is Browse, but they have two Browse areas and one does not have the drop-down for the collection.
If you don't know the exact shelf number, same problem applies.
And trying to find the full-view version rather than the Detail View (which I dislike) is sometimes quite difficult. I don't know why they have both. It's the same information and they wouldn't need the Detail View at all if they would only add thumbnails to the full-view version.