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• Archive Proximity

  Mark Knowles > 10-02-2023, 01:33 PM

  I have bemoaned the fact that Voynich research seems to largely ignore the wealth of material in archives. I appreciate the fact that depending on where ones lives actually visiting an archive may be difficult or inconvenient at best and so online searching is much more convenient. However what percentage of material is available online; if my cipher experience is something to go by then maybe 10%, not more than 20%, which leaves 80+% unexplored. Traveling to another country to do archival research is expensive and time consuming, so not possible for many people. If one is fortunate enough to live near a major archive then the situation is different.
  
  I am fortunate to live near the Bodleian library in Oxford, which is large archive and contains material from continental Europe from the time of Voynich. However someone living in Rome or Paris or Milan amongst other cities would be better placed than I am to find relevant material. I get the impression that the number of researchers living in such locations is very few. Why is that? It would be intriguing to see a map highlighting the most relevant and significant archives to Voynich research and a map showing the cities where Voynich researchers live.
  
  I myself am seriously considering moving to Italy some day in the future as there is a lot more that I can do there than here.

• RE: Archive Proximity

  Aga Tentakulus > 10-02-2023, 03:52 PM

  I wonder how you are going to do that?
  It's not a city library where I can quickly borrow a crime novel.
  In an archive, you first make a request. Maybe you will get an invitation after a check. But then you must already know what exactly you are looking for. They don't let you just walk around the archive and search everything. And certainly not the really old books if you are not a specialist.
  
  I think LisaFaginDavis can explain in more detail how this works. Or maybe Rene, he has certainly already made such requests.

• RE: Archive Proximity

  Mark Knowles > 10-02-2023, 04:02 PM

  (10-02-2023, 03:52 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.explain in more detail how this works

  
  I have made many requests from archives and obtained very many photoreproductions. I think I know how archives work, although archives may differ and I don't have as much experience with them as I would like. The key is taking relevant photos which can be studied at home.
  
  Of course you need to know what you are interested in.

• RE: Archive Proximity

  hatoncat > 15-04-2023, 10:41 PM

  (10-02-2023, 01:33 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have bemoaned the fact that Voynich research seems to largely ignore the wealth of material in archives. I appreciate the fact that depending on where ones lives actually visiting an archive may be difficult or inconvenient at best and so online searching is much more convenient. However what percentage of material is available online; if my cipher experience is something to go by then maybe 10%, not more than 20%, which leaves 80+% unexplored. Traveling to another country to do archival research is expensive and time consuming, so not possible for many people. If one is fortunate enough to live near a major archive then the situation is different.
  
  I am fortunate to live near the Bodleian library in Oxford, which is large archive and contains material from continental Europe from the time of Voynich. However someone living in Rome or Paris or Milan amongst other cities would be better placed than I am to find relevant material. I get the impression that the number of researchers living in such locations is very few. Why is that? It would be intriguing to see a map highlighting the most relevant and significant archives to Voynich research and a map showing the cities where Voynich researchers live.
  
  I myself am seriously considering moving to Italy some day in the future as there is a lot more that I can do there than here.

  
  I wonder how frequent books are digitized/remaining undigitized, regardless of interest. For example, there are 380 incunabula at a library in Rimini (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), where Kaspar von Silenen died in 1517. While I doubt there were any obituaries recorded, it would be interesting if there are any other records like what goods he had or were sold (e.g. if his death certificate mentions whether he was carrying any manuscripts or were sold, such of that of his uncle Jost) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. This could corroborate more information from that era, if following a specific lead.
   
  132r You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. As some of the Rosettes appear architecturally byzantine, I am curious the extent of of the other regions at the time that were neither under Latin nor Ottoman rule.

• RE: Archive Proximity

  Mark Knowles > 15-04-2023, 11:57 PM

  The Biblioteca Civica Gambalunga looks like somewhere that might have historically interesting material to Voynich researchers. The difficulty is that there are many places that might have historically interesting material to Voynich researchers. Because of this it is difficult to know which are the best places to start to look for material. From my own perspective whilst interesting the Gambalunga is not one of the first places that I would look, though I think is certainly worthy of note.
  
  I don't know how or why Kaspar von Silenen is relevant.

• RE: Archive Proximity

  hatoncat > 16-04-2023, 12:35 AM

  (15-04-2023, 11:57 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The Biblioteca Civica Gambalunga looks like somewhere that might have historically interesting material to Voynich researchers. The difficulty is that there are many places that might have historically interesting material to Voynich researchers. Because of this it is difficult to know which are the best places to start to look for material. From my own perspective whilst interesting the Gambalunga is not one of the first places that I would look, though I think is certainly worthy of note.
  
  I don't know how or why Kaspar von Silenen is relevant.

  
  The concept that there are many places to look shouldn't deter someone from beginning the search in any of those places. It just means that there are many places to look. If there were enough people interested, all the libraries with ancient texts should be searched. Non-linear methodology can still accumulate clues that can improve the search as more information/clues become known. For example Kaspar von Silenen was the nephew of a Swiss Prince Bishop; Dr. Gregory Bernhart-Konigstein recently made the claim last month that he and his nephew co-wrote the Voynich Manuscript: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Thus to evaluate the claim, following an educated guess could still turn up a lot of unknown information about that era that was previously unknown- it might not reveal much about the VM, but it might lead to more clues about other events that could be ruled out. 
  
  the way metadata is used in the 21st century actually has a lot of implications for historical knowledge. Only with the vast increases in computational processing has information in discrete manuscripts been able to be combined. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. The definition of metadata might sound useless as random points, but only by manually connecting information that previously required manually visiting each library could now be done digitally. My point is, that hypothetically, if a Swiss library digitizes information from Latin into English from a 1500s text about the whereabouts of someone who also published a book about plants, then that data might not have ever been connected to information in an Italian library containing additional information on the same person. The least manual thing the libraries would need to do is to digitize all of the books, then someone could try to OCR-automate some of it, and then transcribe the rest. Once it is digitized, Latin could be translated into another language (with or without machine automation), and a person who is able to obtain a couple clues could connect far more information with just a couple tips, such as what city they were in and on what date. That is the power of metadata. It doesn't require any specific lead, but a bigger time line can be used to rule out certain theories.
  
  Edit: In 2002, Google began an epic project to scan milions of books: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Rare books of course would need more delicate care, but many of the oldest ones precede copyright, although the choice is still up to the owners. So, idigitizing a lot of books allows more historical access, even though it might not preserve all the data in high res- that should also be considered, especially if there is a forgery or other detail in the text that can't be queried with a string search.

• RE: Archive Proximity

  Mark Knowles > 16-04-2023, 12:32 PM

  (16-04-2023, 12:35 AM)hatoncat Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (15-04-2023, 11:57 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The Biblioteca Civica Gambalunga looks like somewhere that might have historically interesting material to Voynich researchers. The difficulty is that there are many places that might have historically interesting material to Voynich researchers. Because of this it is difficult to know which are the best places to start to look for material. From my own perspective whilst interesting the Gambalunga is not one of the first places that I would look, though I think is certainly worthy of note.

  
  The concept that there are many places to look shouldn't deter someone from beginning the search in any of those places. It just means that there are many places to look. If there were enough people interested, all the libraries with ancient texts should be searched. 
  
  The least manual thing the libraries would need to do is to digitize all of the books

  
  Certainly, I agree that if you are planning a visit to the Biblioteca Civica Gambalunga to search for Voynich related material or digitise documents that would be a worth while exercise. If you are willing and able to provide funding to libraries like the Gambalunga to digitise their manuscripts that would be great. If you are planning a trip I would be happy to discuss other archives that you might want to visit.
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