e-codices Newsletter - Issue N° 23

In this issue

1. Another important milestone: 1'500 digital manuscripts edited on e-codices
2. Index of Authors becomes Person Index
3. Another manuscript from the 'Comites Latentes'
4. Sustainability: A long and complex undertaking
5. News from Fragmentarium
6. Happy Easter

March 2016

Issue N° 23

Another important milestone: 1'500 digital manuscripts edited on e-codices

Over the past ten years, e-codices has published about 15% of Swiss medieval manuscripts in digital form; this is a total of 1,500 manuscripts, about 1,300 from the medieval period. For more than 350 manuscripts, new scientific descriptions were prepared in collaboration with curators and a large scientific community. Christoph Flüeler, founder and director of e-codices, states: "What matters most to us has never been the sheer number of manuscripts or how often each digital manuscript is consulted, although these numbers really are impressive. Much more important to us is meeting the demands of research and kindling new demand, using technology to strike out in new directions, and changing how manuscripts are regarded. For us, the diligence that goes into a critical edition of a text also remains the model for the edition of a digital manuscript". Flüeler explained this as follows in a recent article: "A digital manuscript edition should, like a critical text edition, follow documented scholarly research criteria and not produce a plain, unexamined reproduction of the material object [...] <it should> create some added value [...] <and> should obviously provide a reliable foundation for current research of the original manuscript" (see Flüeler, "Digital manuscripts as critical edition." - http://schoenberginstitute.org/2015/06/30/digital-manuscripts-as-critical-edition).

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Our map with our partner libraries – 57 Swiss institutions are collaborating with e-codices

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"The Digital Libraries Heat Map is, possibly, the most fascinating of our maps: it shows where the digitization of medieval manuscripts is being done most effectively, and which are the areas in the world that are lagging behind." DMMmaps - http://digitizedmedievalmanuscripts.org/maps

Index of Authors becomes Person Index

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Previously e-codices recorded only author names with authority files. All names received a GND-number (Gemeinsame Normdatei, Universal Authority File) so that different variants of a name, particularly common with medieval authors, could be identified as one specific author.
With the new update, the author index will successively be expanded to become a person index. In addition to the author, the following person roles will also be systematically recorded from now on: commentator, translator, scribe, illuminator, bookbinder, annotator, patron, former possessor, librarian, seller ; restorer-conservator and describer will come soon.
In future, work titles, entities, locations and even manuscripts (!) will be provided with authority files and will be captured via a special account by the GND (Gemeinsame Normdatei, Universal Authority File).

Another manuscript from the 'Comites Latentes'

In his metric letter (Epist. I, vi), Petrarch referred to his beloved books as „comites latentes" (hidden friends). Likewise did the owner refer thus to his collection of manuscripts, which Christopher de Hamel in 1985 called „probably the largest privately-owned library of illuminated manuscripts put together by a living collector". Today at the behest of the Comites Latentes Foundation, 145 manuscripts and 67 fragments are held as deposits in the Bibliothèque de Genève. This, the eighth manuscript of that collection, contains a hagiographic compilation. Several texts are attributed to Wauchier de Denain. The manuscript was written in Paris in the early 14th century; it was illuminated by the so-called Master Jean de Papeleu.

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Genève, Bibliothèque de Genève, Comites Latentes 102, f. 2r – Vita plurimorum sanctorum apostolorum martirum confessorum atque virginum (Lives of the saints)

Sustainability: A long and complex undertaking

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One of the greatest challenges for digital libraries is sustainability. Since its first project in 2005, e-codices has continually been working on improving the sustainability of its digital content, today more so than ever. In many respects we have made great progress. We consider our key tasks to be the following:

• A diverse and attractive program. We want to create a wide audience of interested parties. With over 280,000 visitors in 2015, the visibility of Swiss manuscripts has been greatly enhanced. More important still to us are engaged users, who work with and perhaps even collaborate with e-codices (in this context, we should point out our three calls for collaboration in 2010, 2013 and 2015). The significance of a digital library depends on its meeting ongoing demands from the research community as well as from a broad audience.
• Establishing standards for image formats, metadata, interfaces, interoperability. An essential requirement for any professional project is compliance with technical standards. In the coming years, interoperability for images (not just for metadata) and annotations by means of IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) will be essential to ensure the lasting value of a digital library. e-codices was the first digital library in the world to completely conform to IIIF.
• Data Security. Ten years ago, this was still a mostly unresolved problem. Today many universities and large libraries offer a range of services that allow long-term data security. All of our data are archived by the University of Fribourg.
• Modular design of the web application. Commercial software packages and proprietary web applications are not only expensive, they can also make it difficult to keep up with rapid technological developments. A web application with a modular design consisting largely of open source applications is preferable, so that individual components can easily be replaced by newer versions. For instance, last spring e-codices added the additional viewer "Mirador" on a trial basis. Earlier this would have required rebuilding almost the whole system; our programmer was able to complete the entire task, including fixing small glitches (as usual more than 60% of our work), in only 20 hours.
• Technical documentation. All procedures and the entire web application are comprehensively documented on our wiki.
• Cost analysis. A digital library is expensive. The individual cost centers have to be carefully analyzed: the digitization (at the moment about 30% of the costs for e-codices), the programming of the web application (about 10-20%), the content work involving descriptions and metadata (about 30-40%), and the administration (about 20-30%) for project management, fundraising, public relations and outreach, etc. Despite ongoing improvements to our operations, in full cost accounting a digital manuscript on average still costs us about CHF 3,000-5,000 (3,000ドル-5,000).
• Control committees. In the long run, a digital library should not depend on individual people but should rest on many shoulders. Although e-codices has been supported and advised by a Curatorium (Advisory board) from the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences since 2006, these control committees should be expanded further and should also secure closer participation from the partner libraries and from the leading institution (University of Fribourg).
• Financial commitment of the home and the partner institutions. We are convinced that many great initiatives in the domain of digital libraries have experiences similar to those of e-codices: they started as individual projects and are mostly dependent on external funding. True sustainability, however, requires an institution with a sustainable business model that can bear at least the majority of the fixed costs. e-codices has been fighting for such a model for the past ten years, but has made little progress.

The question of sustainability does not arise at the outset of a new project. In the beginning, usually some technical guidelines suffice; but as the project becomes larger, more important, more networked and more expensive, its institutional anchor becomes more and more important.