b'DigiPal'http://www.digipal.eu/blog/2017-03-29T15:38:34+00:00TrueDigiPal wins Inaugural MAA Digital Humanities Prize2017-01-15T14:41:48+00:002017-01-17T22:23:28+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-wins-maa-prize/<p>We are very happy and honoured to announce that the DigiPal project has won the inaugural <a href="https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/page/DHPrize">Digital Humanities Prize</a> of the Medieval Academy of America. <a href="http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/maa-blog-inaugural-medieval-academy-digital-humanities-prize/">The full citation</a> notes that</p>
<blockquote>DigiPal’s innovative framework, collaborative origins, open access, quality design, and skillfully curated pilot collection make it an excellent model for the practice of digital humanities scholarship in the field of medieval studies.</blockquote>
<p>I personally want to thank all the people who have contributed to DigiPal as a project and to the <a href="https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal">free and open-source software</a> that we have continued to develop since the project finished in 2014; these thanks include the European Research Council who funded the whole project through an <a href="https://erc.europa.eu/funding-and-grants/funding-schemes/starting-grants">ERC Starting Grant</a>. The citation formally credits the 'core' DigiPal team of Peter Stokes, Stewart Brookes and Geoffroy Noël, and I certainly want to thank my colleagues Stewart and Geoffroy, but this is only a small seletion of the people who have contributed directly to the project over the last seven years. The DigiPal, <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk">Models of Authority</a> and <a href="http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk">Conqueror's Commissioners</a> (Exon Domeday) projects, as well as smaller projects such as ScandiPal, SephardiPal, ViGOTHIC, and Polices des Caractères et Inscriptions Monétaires, along with the various advisory boards, student interns, and others, brings the total number of contributors to well over 30 people. These people and the <a href="http://www.ahrc.ac.uk">Arts and Humanities Research Council</a>, who funded Models of Authority and the Conqueror's Commissioners, all deserve recognition.</p>
<p>Finally, to give some sense of the significance of this award, here is some text on the Academy and prize (thanks to the MAA's Executive Director, Lisa Fagin Davis, for providing this):</p>
<blockquote>The Medieval Academy of America is the largest organization in the world promoting excellence in the field of medieval studies. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Academy was founded in 1925 and comprises more than 3500 members worldwide. Among other activities, the Academy publishes the quarterly journal Speculum and awards more than a dozen prizes, grants, and fellowships. In 2016, the Council of the Medieval Academy voted to add an annual Digital Humanities Prize to its slate of publication honors. More than twenty digital projects were nominated for the inaugural prize, which is being awarded to DigiPal. The Prize will be presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy, to be held at the University of Toronto from April 6-8. More information about the Medieval Academy can be found at <a href="http://medievalacademy.org">http://medievalacademy.org</a>.</blockquote>
<p>Congratulations again to everyone in the rapidly growing DigiPal community, and I look forward to working with you all more in the years to come.</p>
<h3>Links and References</h3>
<ul>
<li>The DigiPal Project Team: <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/about/project-team/">http://www.digipal.eu/about/project-team/</a></li>
<li>The Models of Authority Project Team: <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/about/project-team/">http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/about/project-team/</a></li>
<li>The Conqueror's Commissioners Project Team: <a href="http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk/about/project-team/">http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk/about/project-team/</a></li>
<li>The free, open-source code for the DigiPal framework: <a href="https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal">https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal</a></li>
<li>Documentation for installing and using the DigiPal framework: <a href="https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal/wiki">https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal/wiki</a></li>
<li>The Medieval Academy of America (MAA): <a href="http://medievalacademy.org">http://medievalacademy.org</a></li>
<li>The MAA Digital Humanities Prize: <a href="https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/page/DHPrize">https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/page/DHPrize</a></li>
<li>Citiation of the inaugural MAA DH Prize (2017): <a href="http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/maa-blog-inaugural-medieval-academy-digital-humanities-prize/">http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/maa-blog-inaugural-medieval-academy-digital-humanities-prize/</a></li>
</ul>
<p>[<em>This article has been cross-posted with minor changes on the <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-wins-inaugural-maa-digital-humanities-prize/">DigiPal</a>, <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/blog/digipal-wins-inaugural-maa-digital-humanities-prize/">Models of Authority</a> and <a href="http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk/blog/digipal-wins-inaugural-maa-digital-humanities-prize/">Conqueror's Commissioners</a> websites.</em>]</p>DigiPal/Models of Authority at DH20162016-07-20T09:43:43+00:002016-07-20T10:00:27+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipalmodels-of-authority-at-dh2016/<p>As noted <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/blog/models-of-authority-at-dh2016/">over on the Models of Authority site</a>, the project team there was represented at Digital Humanities 2016 in Krakow. We presented a poster showing how the DigiPal framework has now been extended to include texts alongside images, and the texts themselves can be marked up according to project-specific schemas in order to allow searching by type of text as well as palaeographic feature. The full abstract is now published online, and the accompanying poster is embedded below. A high-resolution version in PDF is also available by clicking on the image (3.77 MB).</p>
<ul>
<li>P.A. Stokes, S. Brookes, G. Noël, J.R. Davies, T. Webber, D. Broun, A. Taylor, and J. Tucker, J. 'The Models of Authority Project: Extending the DigiPal Framework for Script and Decoration', in <em>Digital Humanities 2016: Conference Abstracts</em>, ed. by Maciej Eder and Jan Rybicki (Krakow, 2016), pp. 896-99. Available at <a href="http://dh2016.adho.org/abstracts/387">http://dh2016.adho.org/abstracts/387</a></li>
</ul>
<p><a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/media/uploads/Blog/2016/dh2016_poster.pdf"><img alt="Image of the Models of Authority poster from DH2016" src="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/media/uploads/Blog/2016/dh2016_poster.jpg" style="border: 1px solid black;" title="DH Poster (click to download high-resolution version)." width="500"/></a></p>
<p><em>Models of Authority Poster, DH2016. Click to download full version (3.77 MB)</em></p>DigiPal at Kalamazoo 20162016-05-10T20:56:57+00:002016-05-10T20:58:15+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-at-kalamazoo-2016/<p>The <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk">Models of Authority</a> and <a href="http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk">Exon Domesday</a> projects, both of which are following on from DigiPal, will be represented at the 51st International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2016. We have two sessions, with details below, and we hope to see you there.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Sunday, May 15, 8:30–10:00am</strong><br/><strong>Session 494, Fetzer 1005</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Models of Authority: Searching Questions for Medieval Scottish Charters, <em>Stewart J. Brookes, King's College London</em></li>
<li>What Order Are My Pages? Bringing Codicology to DigiPal, <em>Peter A. Stokes, King’s College London</em></li>
<li>Visualizing Manuscript Content through the Collation Project, <em>Dorothy Carr Porter, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies</em></li>
</ol></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Sunday, May 15, 10:30am–noon</strong><br/><strong>Session 522, Fetzer 1005</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Visualizing the Roman de la Rose Digital Library: New Pathways to Manuscript Studies, <em>Kristen Mapes, Michigan State Univ.</em></li>
<li>Scaling Up: Macroanalysis and Manuscripts, <em>Benjamin L. Albritton, Stanford Univ. Libraries</em></li>
<li>Beyond 2D: Representing the Materiality of Medieval Manuscripts, <em>William F. Endres, Univ. of Oklahoma</em></li>
</ol></blockquote>Using DigiPal: A Quick Introduction to the Framework2015-10-06T16:12:10+00:002017-03-28T11:41:40+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/a-quick-introduction-to-the-digipal-framework/<p>In order to orient new users quickly around this website, and to show some features that even seasoned users may not have seen, here is a short list of some of the things that can be done with the framework. Remember that the framework is generic software that is designed such that the list of letters, allographs, components (ascender, descender etc.) and features (seriffed, ‘serif type A’ etc.) can be customised for any project, and so it’s adaptable to a wide range of writing-systems. The website you are looking at now is one application of that framework, namely to writing in English from the eleventh century. Another is <a href="https://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/">Models of Authority</a>, and more are under development.</p>
<ul>
<li>You can see an overview of all the images of manuscript pages at<br/><a href="http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/page/">http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/page/</a> </li>
<li>A search for all images of the letter ‘a’ is at<br/><a href="http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/search/?basic_search_type=graphs&character=a">http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/search/?basic_search_type=graphs&character=a</a> Clicking on any letter will allow you to see the image of the full manuscript page (if available).</li>
<li>A search for all images of Square æ (an allograph of the Old English letter æ) is at <br/><a href="http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/search/?basic_search_type=graphs&character=%C3%A6&allograph=Square">http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/search/?basic_search_type=graphs&character=æ&allograph=Square</a></li>
<li>For images of all letters containing descenders:<br/><a href="http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/search/?basic_search_type=graphs&component=descender">http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/search/?basic_search_type=graphs&component=descender</a></li>
<li>Images of letters with wedges (serifs) on them:<br/><a href="http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/search/?basic_search_type=graphs&feature=wedged">http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/search/?basic_search_type=graphs&feature=wedged</a></li>
<li>Images of an allograph of d written at Worcester Cathedral (using alternative search interface):<br/><a href="http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/search/facets/?hand_place=Worcester&allograph=d%2C+Insular&%40xp_allograph=1&page=1&result_type=graphs">http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/search/facets/?hand_place=Worcester&allograph=d%2C+Insular&%40xp_allograph=1&page=1&result_type=graphs</a></li>
<li>The output of a particular scribe: <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/scribes/35/hands/">http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/scribes/35/hands/</a></li>
<li>A particular graph on a particular page: <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/page/186/?graph=12106">http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/page/186/?graph=12106</a></li>
<li>An image of the page along with a parallel transcription and translation (used in <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/">Models of Authority</a>, another website based on the DigiPal framework):<br/><a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/digipal/manuscripts/238/texts/view/">http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk/digipal/manuscripts/238/texts/view/</a></li>
<li>A ‘Collection’, namely an arbitrary set of images saved by a user: <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/collection/shared/1/?collection=%7B%22id%22%3A%221%22%2C%22annotations%22%3A%5B3129%2C3130%2C3131%2C3132%2C3223%2C3224%2C3225%2C3226%2C3227%2C45687%2C45688%2C45689%2C45690%2C45691%2C45692%5D%2C%22images%22%3A%5B36%5D%2C%22name%22%3A%22Collection%22%7D">here</a></li>
<li>You can then send that Collection (and/or any other images) to the Virtual Lightbox: <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/lightbox/?annotations=[3129,3130,3131,3132,3223,3224,3225,3226,3227,45687,45688,45689,45690,45691,45692]&images=[]&editorial=[%20%20]&from=%2Fdigipal%2Fcollection%2Fshared%2FCollection">here</a></li>
<li>If you have basic programming skills then you can also use the API to write your own custom queries and visualisations, for instance this visualisation of the chronological distribution of scribal hands attributed to Worcester: <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/digipal/api/hand/?_assigned_place__name__contains=Worcester&_assigned_date__s_xi=1&@limit=200&@format=xml&@select=item_part,label,*assigned_date,min_weight,max_weight,date&@xslt=svg-distribution-2">here</a></li>
</ul>
<p>The framework is still being expanded and developed, so keep an eye out here for future posts of new features and changes as we continue.</p>DigiPal Nominated for DH2014 Awards2015-02-19T16:05:51+00:002015-02-26T14:43:30+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-nominated-for-dh2014-awards/<p>We were very happy to discover that DigiPal has been nominated for a <a href="http://dhawards.org">DH Award</a> in the category of 'Best Digital Humanities Tool or Suite of Tools'. The first DH Awards were given for projects launched in 2012 and are described by the committee as follows:</p>
<blockquote>Digital Humanities Awards are a set of annual awards where the public is able to nominate resources for the recognition of talent and expertise in the digital humanities community. The resources are nominated and voted for entirely by the public. The weeding out by the nominations committee is solely based on the criteria of “Is it DH?”, “Is it in the right category?”, and “Was it launched/published/majorly updated in that year?”. These awards are intended as an awareness raising activity, to help put interesting DH resources in the spotlight and engage DH users (and general public) in the work of the community. Awards are not specific to geography, language, conference, organization or field of humanities that they benefit. Any suitable resource in any language or writing system may be nominated in any category. DH Awards actively encourages representation from more minority languages, cultures, and areas of DH. All nominated resources are worth investigating to see the range of DH work out there.</blockquote>
<p>There are some very intersting projects in the <a href="http://dhawards.org/dhawards2014/voting/">list of nominations</a> for this year (available also in <a href="http://dhawards.org/dhawards2014/nominations/nominations-french/">French</a>, <a href="http://dhawards.org/dhawards2014/voting-announcement-japanese/">Japanese</a>, and <a href="http://dhawards.org/dhawards2014/nominations/nominations-spanish/">Spanish</a>), so do go and have a look at the examples of what people have been up to in the field.</p>
<p>Voting is open to everyone, too, with a deadline of 28 February 2015, so be sure to <a href="http://dhawards.org/dhawards2014/voting/">go and vote</a>!</p>DigiPal at the EPHE2014-11-24T10:47:26+00:002014-12-10T17:23:52+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-at-the-ephe/<p>Although the DigiPal project is formally over, work is still continuing on it, particularly through the six other projects that are now using the framework that we have created. We are also still actively presenting at conferences, including a very interesting-looking workshop at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris on issues in regional variation in palaeography across the world's writing systems. The summary from the flier, which is embedded below, reads as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Le Groupe de recherches transversales en paléographie (GRTP), qui vient d’être créé à l’École Pratique des Hautes Études afin de développer une approche transdiciplinaire de la paléographie, vous invite à participer à une nouvelle journée d’études et de discussions. Après nous être intéressés au paramètre chronologique (journée de juin sur la datation paléographique), nous voudrions examiner cette fois-ci le paramètre spatial dans la forma- tion, le développement et la diversification des écritures.</p>
<p>La question de l’apprentissage, des modèles et de la transmission des savoirs des scribes est au cœur de cette problématique. Tandis que les grandes aires géo- culturelles sont bien définies, la démarche consistant à définir des typologies plus fines qui permettent de dégager des pratiques différentes au sein d’un même type graphique est inégalement développée d’une paléographie à l’autre. Relativement bien définies par les paléographes des domaines latins, byzantins ou arabes, les spécificités régionales le sont moins pour d’autres cultures. Nous souhaiterions réfléchir sur la genèse de ces diversifications (apprentissage, transmission des pratiques scribales, institutionnalisation dans le cadre des chancelleries ou des scriptoria) et de leur coexistence au sein d’une grande famille typologique. Les travaux de ce groupe sont ouverts à tous.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The schedule is as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>Michel Chauveau (EPHE) : <em>démotique</em></li>
<li>Alain Delattre (EPHE, Université Libre de Bruxelles) : <em>copte</em></li>
<li>Lucio Del Corso (Università di Cassino) : <em>grec des papyrus</em></li>
<li>Brigitte Mondrain (EPHE) : <em>grec des manuscrits byzantins</em></li>
<li>Alain Desreumaux (CNRS) : <em>syriaque</em></li>
<li>Marc Smith (ENC-EPHE) : <em>latin</em></li>
<li>Peter A. Stokes (King’s College London) : <em>minuscule anglo-saxonne et paléographie numérique</em></li>
<li>Olivier Venture (EPHE) : <em>chinois</em></li>
<li>Matthew Kapstein (EPHE) : <em>tibétain</em></li>
<li>André Lemaire (EPHE) : <em>écritures ouest-sémitiques</em></li>
<li>Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (EPHE) : <em>hébreu judéen</em></li>
</ul>
<p>I'm looking forward to what promsies to be a very interesting day, and particularly to the challenges of applying DigiPal to Syriac and demotic!</p>
<p><a href="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/spec._reg._pal._(06.12.2014)_prog.pdf"><img alt="An image of the flier advertising the EPHE conference" height="426" src="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/.thumbnails/spec._reg._pal._%2806.12.2014%29_prog.jpg/spec._reg._pal._%2806.12.2014%29_prog-300x426.jpg" style="border: 1px solid black;" title="EPHE Flier (click to download as PDF)" width="300"/></a></p>The Last Days of DigiPal: DigiPal Publications2014-09-11T13:59:19+00:002017-03-29T15:38:34+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/the-last-days-of-digipal-publications/<p>As we approach the end of the project, I've been spending some time looking back over it and what we've managed to achieve. I have to say that I've been very happy with it, thanks very much to an extremely effective <a href="http://localhost:8080/about/project-team/">project team</a> (which has also been a real pleasure to work with). Although the website has naturally been the focus, this is only one part of what we have been doing. As explained under <a href="http://localhost:8080/about/the-project/project-outcomes/">Project Outcomes</a>, the DigiPal project always had three different, though interconnected, components:</p>
<ol>
<li>The general framework which can be applied to a range of different scripts and contexts (including, now, decoration).</li>
<li>The application of that framework to the test-case of eleventh-century English vernacular minuscule. That is the site you're looking at now.</li>
<li>A series of publications, reflecting on and analysing the material from (1) and (2) above.</li>
</ol>
<p><span>It has always been clear to us that data is valuable – essential, even – but that it is a means and not an end, and so a key goal of the project was always to demonstrate how this website can be used in practice for 'real' palaeographical analysis. After all, if we on the team can't do this then who can? Well, I'm happy to say that we have been very productive in this field. The full list of publications is available from the <a href="http://localhost:8080/publications/">Publications</a> page, but in summary, in addition to the software, data and documentation, at the time of writing we have also produced: </span></p>
<ul>
<li>One monograph, on English vernacular minuscule.</li>
<li>One edited collection (currently in the final stages of preparation) on digital approaches to palaeography.</li>
<li><span>UPDATE: Eight peer-reviewed articles or chapters in books.</span></li>
<li>Eight working papers, short articles, posters or reports.</li>
<li>Nine videos of conference papers or lectures.</li>
<li>Thirty blog posts discussing various aspects of digital methods in palaeography.</li>
<li>Eighty-seven short announcements of news from the world of palaeography. </li>
</ul>
<p>Please do have a look at the full <a href="http://localhost:8080/publications/">list of publications</a> and let us know what you think. In the meantime, my personal thanks goes again to the project team and to the ERC for allowing so much to get done.</p>The Last Days of DigiPal: A Call for Testers2014-09-08T17:50:48+00:002014-09-11T14:01:46+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/the-last-days-of-digipal/<p>DigiPal is coming to an end, and we need your help to test the framework as thoroughly as possible. First, though, let me tell you a bit more about what we've done and what's left to do.</p>
<p>Today marks the beginning of the last stretch of the DigiPal project. As regular readers will know, funding for this project ends on 30 September 2014, which is three weeks and one day from now. I'm very happy to say that this won't be the end of it: of course the DigiPal website will stay active, and indeed it will continue to be extended through the <a href="http://localhost:8080/blog/new-digipal-project-models-of-authority/">Models of Authority</a> and <a href="http://localhost:8080/blog/a-new-phase-for-digipal-ii-the-conquerors-commissioners-project/">Exon Domesday</a> projects, but the 'core' ERC-funded part will end soon.</p>
<p>The reason I say that today is the beginning of the end is that we have just released our last functional update of the DigiPal framework. That's right: the website as it stands today represents all the functionality that there will be as part of this project. From here on, at least within the scope of the core project, there will be no new features. So, let's have a look at what you can do:</p>
<ul>
<li>Search for <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/search/?from_link=true&s=1&result_type=manuscripts">manuscripts and charters</a>, <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/search/?from_link=true&s=1&result_type=scribes">scribes</a>, <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/search/?from_link=true&s=1&result_type=hands">scribal hands</a>, and <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/search/?from_link=true&s=1&result_type=graphs">graphs</a> (images of letter-forms).</li>
<li>Explore a <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/search/facets/">faceted search</a> of manuscripts and charters, images, scribes hands and graphs (this is still in 'beta').</li>
<li><a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/page/">Browse</a> images of over 800 manuscript pages and charters.</li>
<li>Read descriptions of <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/manuscripts/527/">manuscripts</a>, <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/manuscripts/203/">charters</a>, and <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/hands/68/descriptions/">scribal hands</a>.</li>
<li>See images of <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/page/144/">manuscript</a> and <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/page/34/">charter</a> pages marked up with palaeographical annotations.</li>
<li>Form collections of images, whether of complete pages or of individual images, saving them to your browser or desktop, or sharing them via Twitter, e-mail, or whatever else you prefer. See, for instance, <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/collection/shared/1/?collection=%7B%22id%22%3A%221%22%2C%22annotations%22%3A%5B12107%2C12108%2C53241%2C53244%2C4284%2C4285%2C11612%2C11613%2C11614%5D%2C%22name%22%3A%22Eadwig%20Basan's%20b%22%7D">my collection of the letter <strong>b</strong> written by the famous scribe Eadwig Basan</a>.</li>
<li>Once you have a collection then you can send it to the Lightbox, which allows you to manipulate your images in various ways (resizing, rotating, overlaying, comparing and so on), where you can again share, download and so on. See, for instance, <a href="http://localhost:8080/lightbox/?annotations=[12107,12108,53241,53244,4284,4285,11612,11613,11614]&images=[]&editorial=[%20%20]&from=%2Fdigipal%2Fcollection%2Fshared%2FEadwig%2520Basan's%2520b">the collection of Eadwig's <strong>b</strong>s</a>.</li>
<li><span>Download our framework from our <a href="https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal">open-source repository on GitHub</a>.</span></li>
<li>Connect your software directly to the DigiPal data using our API (preliminary documentation is available on <a href="https://github.com/kcl-ddh/digipal/blob/master/digipal/api/digipal-api.txt">GitHub</a>) which in turn allows custom searches like this <a href="http://localhost:8080/digipal/api/annotation/?_graph__display_label__startswith=s&_image__id=80&@select=id,str,*graph,html">display of images associated with a particular hand</a>. (Remember, this is not designed for human consumption!) </li>
<li>We don't use these in DigiPal, but the framework also has a component for generating maps and timelines of your data which some associated projects are using.</li>
</ul>
<p>So, with all that, what are we we doing for the last month? Testing and documenting! Yes, that's right: we are going to be improving the layout of the site a bit, and we will be adding new and correcting old content, but for the most part we will be documenting the site and fixing any bugs. We will be explaining how people can search and explore better, what all the content means, and we will also document how it works 'behind the scenes' so you can use it yourself.</p>
<p>This is also where you come in. We want to know about <em>all</em> the bugs that are still in the system. We know about some – we have a long list of them! – but we're also sure that you'll find ones we haven't found yet. So please, test it, see what you think, and let us know of any bugs. So, contact us through the <a href="http://localhost:8080/about/contact/">feedback form</a>, write comments at the bottom of this page, or e-mail us at digipal@kcl.ac.uk. Most of all, remember that we can't do any more debugging after the funding runs out. So <strong><em>this is your last chance!</em></strong></p>ERC Workshop on Research Data Management and Sharing2014-07-20T17:21:59+00:002014-07-20T18:12:13+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/erc-workshop-on-research-data-management-and-sharing/<p>I am very happy to say that the <a href="http://erc.europa.eu/">European Research Council</a> has invited the DigiPal project to be presented at a two-day <a href="http://erc.europa.eu/media-and-events/events/erc-workshop-research-data-management-and-sharing">workshop on Research Data Management and Sharing</a> to be held in Brussels this September (2014). We have been selected as one of nine projects from across the whole ERC, just three from the Social Sciences and Humanities, because we can provide 'many interesting data-related aspects for discussion with other grantees, with members of the ERC Scientific Council and colleagues from the ERCEA, with data experts and policy makers'; these aspects include, among other things, our 'solutions and good practice examples'. The workshop is by invitation only but it is possible to request an invitation: details are in the ERC circular which is pasted in below. I personally think this is a real honour and is testimony to the outstanding work done by the whole <a href="http://localhost:8080/about/project-team/">DigiPal team</a>, so many congratulations and thanks to them all. I hope also to see some strong representation from the Humanities at this workshop, so do request an invitation if you are interested at all.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><img height="106" src="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/.thumbnails/erclogo.jpg/erclogo-111x106.jpg" width="111"/></p>
<p><b>ERC Workshop on Research Data Management and Sharing</b></p>
<p><b>18 – 19 September 2014, Covent Garden, Brussels</b></p>
<p><b>On 18–19 September 2014, the European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA) in collaboration with the ERC Scientific Council's <i>Working Group on Open Access</i> is organising a workshop on <i>Research Data Management and Sharing</i>.</b></p>
<p>During this 2-day event different aspects of this important topic will be explored together with ERC grantees and other researchers, with representatives from funding bodies, universities and other research performers, with publishers, scientific societies, policy makers and other interested parties.</p>
<p>The workshop is organised around a number of interactive sessions with lots of room for discussion. The ultimate aim is to generate a number of concrete recommendations to relevant stakeholders on how to encourage and support good data management practices and facilitate the sharing of research data.</p>
<p>The workshop is by invitation only. A draft programme and information on how to request an invitation are available on the <a href="http://erc.europa.eu/media-and-events/events/erc-workshop-research-data-management-and-sharing">ERC website</a>, where more details about the programme will be made available soon.</p>
</blockquote>A New Phase for DigiPal II: The Conqueror's Commissioners Project2014-07-18T08:59:36+00:002016-01-27T12:48:00+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/a-new-phase-for-digipal-ii-the-conquerors-commissioners-project/<p>I am very pleased to announce a <em>second</em> AHRC-funded project which will also build on the DigiPal framework. In addition to the 'Models of Authority' announced in <a href="http://localhost:8080/blog/new-digipal-project-models-of-authority/">an earlier post</a>, the '<a href="http://www.exondomesday.ac.uk">Exon Domesday, Conqueror's Commisioners</a>' will begin on 1 October 2014, immediately after DigiPal itself finishes, and will continue until 30 September 2017. It constitutes a detailed study of the Exon Domesday Book, including its palaeography and codicology, and will result in extensions to the DigiPal framework which include more detailed modelling and visualisation particularly for codicology, distributions of palaeographical features throughout a single manuscript, and geographical content in the book. Quoting from the <a href="http://www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk/visiting/cathedrallibrary/exon-domesday-book-unlocked-for-future-generations-.ashx">project press release</a>,</p>
<blockquote>One of the most precious treasures of Exeter Cathedral Library is at last to receive the attention it deserves thanks to a major research project hosted by King’s College London and the Friends of Exeter Cathedral and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Few local residents know that Exeter houses the earliest manuscript of William the Conqueror’s Domesday survey. Exon Domesday, written in the South West nearly 1000 years ago, and housed at Exeter for most or all of its lifetime, is the most complete and extensive record of the data collected by commissioners working across England at the end of the Conqueror’s reign. It records data for Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire before the process of editing and simplification which produced Great Domesday Book, the version of Domesday Book known to all and preserved at the National Archives at Kew. Exon Domesday provides unique information about the landscape and population of these counties in the generation before and after the Norman conquest of 1066. Researchers also hope that Exon Domesday will contain the key to understanding the Domesday survey itself, one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the effectiveness of royal government in the Middle Ages.</blockquote>
<p>The project will be lead by Prof. Julia Crick in the Department of History at King's College London; Co-Investigators are Dr Stephen Baxter (St Peter's College Oxford) and me (Peter Stokes, Dept. of Digital Humanities at King's). Researchers include Geoffroy Noël (from the DigiPal project) and Chris Lewis, both also from King's. There will be two PhD studentships and one Research Associate position as part of this project, so look out for further announcements about these shortly.</p>DigiPal at DH20142014-07-03T08:56:31+00:002014-07-03T18:18:05+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-at-dh2014/<p>The DigiPal project will be represented at <a href="http://dh2014.org/">DH2014</a> in <a href="https://dh2014.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/digital-humanities-2014-posters-june-17.pdf">Poster Session 1</a> at 14:00-15:30 in the Amphipôle Building, UNIL, on July 10th. I will be there to demonstrate not only the latest version of DigiPal, but also to provide an exclusive view of ScandiPal and SephardiPal, two projects by PhD students, Matilda Watson and Debora Matos, who are extending and applying the framework to eleventh-century Scandinavian fragments and fifteenth-century Hebrew manuscripts from the Iberian Peninsula. You will also get to see the back end and new API, and to discuss the finer details of the framework and how you could use and extend it yourself. The published abstract for the poster is freely available online at <a href="http://dharchive.org/paper/DH2014/Poster-193.xml">http://dharchive.org/paper/DH2014/Poster-193.xml</a>, and a copy of the poster is below (3.9MB); if you look closely at the poster then you'll find some other interesting details buried in there which will be announced publicly before long.</p>
<p>I hope to see you there!</p>
<p><a href="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/DH2014%20Poster.pdf" title="Download full resolution poster (3.9MB)"><img alt="Poster" height="493" src="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/.thumbnails/DH2014%20Poster.jpg/DH2014%20Poster-697x493.jpg" title="Click to download full resolution version (3.9 MB)" width="697"/></a></p>dhAHRC Workshop in London: Friday 27th June 2014: UPDATE2014-06-20T16:00:36+00:002014-07-03T22:02:35+00:00Stewart J. Brookeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/sbrookes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/dhahrc2/<p><img alt="" height="81" src="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/.thumbnails/dhAHRC.jpg/dhAHRC-728x81.jpg" width="728"/></p>
<p>Following on from the huge success of their workshop in <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/blog/dhahrc/">Oxford</a> last week, the dhAHRC people have decided to do it all over again, this time at the British Library.[1] It should be noted for those lucky enough to have attended last week's workshop that the list of speakers for the London event is almost entirely different from those that took Oxford by storm. We say "almost" because DigiPal will feature again, the only surviving member of the original line-up.[2] Which goes to prove our point, that you can't have a hip'n'happening Digital Humanities bash without DigiPal being involved. Or, at least, not one entitled "<span>Applying New Digital Methods to the Humanities" that takes place on 27th June at the British Library.</span></p>
<p><span>According to the dhAHRC website, topics </span><span>will include "sharing data, digital publishing, databases and literary studies, mapping and visualisation methods." And in case that's not enough, the workshop will "</span><span>offer an introduction to the practical skills researchers need in order to work effectively within and beyond universities, drawing on the knowledge and experience of expert researchers and practitioners from London and beyond." Sounds good to me. I'll be there. Here is a list of speakers:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span><span>Rosemary Bechler: "<span>Audience Development ... should be everyone's job.</span></span></span><span><br/> </span></li>
<li><span>Stewart Brookes: "Turning the Final Pages: The DigiPal Database of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts"</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span>Jane Gilbert and Paul Vetch: "'I was but the learner; now I am the master': Modelling and Implementing a Digital Resource for the Medieval Francophone Literary Cultures Outside France project"<br/> </span></li>
<li><span>Neil Jefferies: "Shared Canvas and IIIF"<br/> </span></li>
<li><span><span>Kimberly Kowal and Martin Foys: "<span>Data + Place: Virtual Mappa and Other Forays into Spatial Data Production"</span></span></span><span><br/> </span></li>
<li><span>Chris Lintott: "Lessons from the Zooniverse: From Citizen Science to Digital Humanities"</span></li>
<li>
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<p>Jason Sundram: "A Quantitative Approach to Haydn’s String Quartets"</p>
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<li><span>Melissa Terras: "Digital Humanities Through and Through"</span></li>
<li>
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<p>David Tomkins: "The Sound of the Crowd"</p>
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</li>
<li><span>Jane Winters: "Big Data for Arts and Humanities Research"<br/><span><br/></span></span></li>
<li><span><span>David Wrisley: "Doing Things with a Spatial Dataset of Medieval Literature"</span></span></li>
</ul>
<p><span>For more details and to book, click here: London </span><a href="http://dhcrowdscribe.com/event/">dhAHRC</a></p>
<p>No DH event would be worth its salt without an app,[3] so download the dhAHRC Android event app here: <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.justeventapps.DHCrowdScribeLondon" target="_blank">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.justeventapps.DHCrowdScribeLondon</a></p>
<p>Hope to see you at the BL!</p>
<p>[1] Well, it's been planned for months, but where's the fun in announcing that?</p>
<p>[2] Breaking news from the event organisers is that "the other Oxford speakers have survived and we can assure you that they are all alive and well". I am grateful for that clarification.</p>
<p>[3] Shouldn't have said that as we haven't got one for the <a href="http://www.digipal.eu/blog/symposium4/">DigiPal Symposium</a> in September.</p>DigiPal at Kalamazoo ICMS 20142014-05-02T10:19:47+00:002014-07-03T21:58:49+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-at-kalamazoo-icms-2014/<p>DigiPal will be represented at the <a href="http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/index.html">49th International Congress of Medieval Studies</a> Kalamazoo this year, with two sessions on digital methods in manuscript studies. In these the project will be presented, but also related work by others. The emphasis of the first session is on citation and representation: how can we consistenly cite palaeographical details, particularly without a consistent terminology? What about canonical references, linked data? How do we present our arguments in consistent and stable ways? The second session focuses on 'paratext', including provenance details but also scratched glosses and how we can approach these using digital tools. You'll also see the latest developments 'behind the scenes' with the DigiPal framework and some of the other projects in which it's being used. Do come, discuss, and tell us what you think.</p>
<p>Session 375 <br/><strong>Digital Methods I: Citation and Representation of Medieval Manuscripts</strong> <br/>10am, Saturday 10 May, Room Bernhard 208</p>
<ul>
<li><em>To Thine Own Self Be True: Attempting to Capture the Ineffable Holistic in the Empire 'Content' and 'Data'</em>; Matthew Evan Davis, North Carolina State Univ.</li>
<li><em>Citing Visual Evidence in Paleographical Argument: The DigiPal Experience</em>; Peter A. Stokes, King’s College London</li>
<li><em>Constructing, Testing, and Analyzing a Semantic Graph of Manuscript Features</em>; Christine Roughan, College of the Holy Cross, and Neel Smith, College of the Holy Cross </li>
</ul>
<p>Session 430 <br/><strong>Digital Methods II: Reading between the Lines of Medieval Manuscripts</strong> <br/>10:30am, Sunday 11 May, Room Bernhard 208</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Penn Provenance Project</em>; Regan Kladstrup, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Univ. of Pennsylvania</li>
<li><em>First Impressions: Glosses Scratched into Old English Manuscripts</em>; Stewart J. Brookes, King's College London</li>
<li><em>You Scratch My Gloss and I’ll Scratch Yours: Glosses as Commentary, Instruction, and/or Vandalism</em>; Sarah J. Biggs, British Library/Courtauld Institute of Art</li>
</ul>25% Off 'English Vernacular Minuscule' until 1 July 20142014-04-16T11:35:58+00:002014-07-03T23:23:07+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/25-percent-off-english-vernacular-minuscule/<p>Boydell are offering a 25% discount for <em>English Vernacular Minuscule</em> until 1 June 2014. If you want to take advantage of this offer then you can either <a href="http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14422">order it from their website</a>, using offer code <strong>14082</strong>, or you can download the flyer below, complete the form and post it to them (click on the image to get the full PDF).</p>
<p>I see that some people are reading it already and am very interested to hear what they think. I expect it will be controversial, at least in part, and I would be very interested to receive any feedback, either to me directly or in the Comments below.</p>
<p><a href="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/English%20Vernacular%20Minuscule.pdf"><img alt="Boydell Flyer for 'English Vernacular Minuscule'" height="439" src="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/.thumbnails/English%20Vernacular%20Minuscule.jpg/English%20Vernacular%20Minuscule-310x439.jpg" title="Click to download for printing (PDF)" width="310"/> </a></p>DigiPal at Università Ca' Foscari2014-04-03T12:07:54+00:002014-07-04T02:32:35+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/digipal-at-universita-cafoscari/<p>The DigiPal team will be represented at yet another conference next week: this time is 'Digital Palaeography: Projects, Prospects, Potentialities' at Università Ca'Foscari in Venice, on Thursday and Friday 10–11 April 2014. Quoting from the <a href="http://localhost:8080/media/uploads/images/blog_posts/2014/digital%20paleography%20workshop-def.pdf">conference flier</a>:</p>
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<blockquote>
<p>The present international workshop addresses a recent cutting-edge research field which explores the potentialities lying in the application of information technologies to non-printed graphic systems on whatever writing surface.</p>
<p>The workshop proposes to explore three principal themes: the digital paleography state of the art; the potentiality of different approaches applied to automatic digital recognition of medieval handwritings; the problem of sixteenth-eighteenth centuries individual handwriting digital recognition, in particular in wills from the Venetian State Archives, as part of the “Venice Time Machine Project” recently launched by Università Ca’ Foscari, Digital Humanities Lab (DHLAB), EPFL, Lausanne and the Archivio di Stato di Venezia.</p>
<p>The workshop is open to students of both Bachelor and Master levels (with credit recognition of substitute activity for the traineeship), for Ph.D. students and for all those interested in the theme.</p>
<p>For information please contact:<br/>Flavia De Rubeis: flaviadr@unive.it <br/>Dorit Raines: raines@unive.it </p>
</blockquote>
<p> As always, I hope to see some of you there.</p>
<p> </p>
</div>A New Phase for DigiPal: The Models of Authority Project2014-03-28T11:42:05+00:002015-07-15T12:30:43+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/new-digipal-project-models-of-authority/<h4>UPDATE (15th July 2015): We are delighted to announce that the <a href="http://www.modelsofauthority.ac.uk">Models of Authority</a> site is now up and running. </h4>
<p>I am very pleased to announce a new AHRC-funded project which (among other things) will result in some important extensions to the DigiPal framework. 'Models of Authority' is a study of Scottish charters and the emergence of government for the period 1100–1250, to run from 1 April 2014 to 31 July 2017. Quoting from the proposal summary:</p>
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<p>This project is about government and the way it emerged and developed in the middle ages. Government as we would think of it today can first be recognised in western Europe during the twelfth century. But was it the natural result of increasing royal power and authority; or was it a response of kings to disorder? Understanding the emergence of medieval government has to be based on understanding the main source of evidence - charters - and it is in the twelfth century that charters begin to survive in large numbers. This project's new approach is to focus on understanding and interpreting the most distinctive features of charters - the appearance of their handwriting and the formulaic aspects of their prose. </p>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
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</div>
<p>The Principal Investigator is <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/dauvitbroun/">Prof. Dauvit Broun</a> from the University of Glasgow; Co-Investigators are Drs <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/history/people/staff/academic/taylor/index.aspx">Alice Taylor</a> and DigiPal's <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/people/academic/stokes/">Peter Stokes</a>, both from King's College London, and <a href="http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/mtjw2@cam.ac.uk">Dr Tessa Webber</a> from the University of Cambridge; researchers are <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/johndavies/">Dr John Davies</a> from Glasgow, and Dr <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/people/research/brookes/">Stewart Brookes</a> and <a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/people/academic/noel/">Geoffroy Noël</a> from the DigiPal project at King's College London; the research student is Joanna Tucker from Glasgow. </p>
<div>The DigiPal part of the project will not start until the existing grant ends on 30 September 2014, but we will be implementing two significant new developments in the framework, both of which people have been requesting for a long time. The first is the incorporation of full transcripts, meaning that we will be able to link images and annotations to TEI-encoded texts. The second is a formal model for the representation of cursive script, removing the restriction to set script that DigiPal currently supports.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I’m very happy to be working with this group, and particularly for the chance to add significantly to DigiPal, extending its development for a few more years yet. The cursive script will be a particularly interesting challenge, and I very much look forward to seeing where it all goes.</div>New Publication: English Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut, circa 990 – circa 10352014-03-05T12:22:53+00:002014-07-03T20:08:02+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/new-publication-english-vernacular-minuscule/<p>I am very pleased to announce the publication of <em>English Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut, circa 990 – circa 1035</em> (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014). The book is available from <a href="http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14422">Boydell and Brewer</a>, and (as the title suggests) it presents a study of the vernacular script of the early eleventh century. Full details are as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A new, distinct script, English Vernacular minuscule, emerged in the 990s, used for writing in Old English. It appeared at a time of great political and social upheaval, with Danish incursions and conquest, continuing monastic reform, and an explosion of writing and copying in the vernacular, including the homilies of Ælfric and Wulfstan, two different recensions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, two of the four major surviving manuscripts of Old English poetry (the "Beowulf" and "Junius" books), and many original royal and ecclesiastical diplomas, writs and wills. However, although these important manuscripts and documents have been studied extensively, this has tended to be in isolation or small groups, never before as a complete corpus, a gap which this volume aims to rectify. It opens with the historical context, followed by a thorough reexamination of the evidence for dating and localising examples of the script. It then offers a full analysis of the complete corpus of surviving writing in English Vernacular minuscule, datable approximately from its inception in the 990s to the death of Cnut in 1035. While solidly grounded in palaeographical methodology, the book introduces more innovative approaches: by examining all of the approximately 500 surviving examples of the script as a whole rather than focussing on selected highlights, it presents a synthesis of the handwriting in order to identify local practices, new scribal connections, and chronological and stylistic developments in this important but surprisingly little-studied script.</p>
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<p>13 Digit ISBN: 9781843843696<br/>Pages: 309<br/>Size: 23.4 x 15.6<br/>Binding: Hardback<br/>Imprint: D.S.Brewer<br/>Series: <a href="http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/listCategoriesAndProducts.asp?idCategory=181">Pubns Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies</a> <br/>Subject: <a href="http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/listCategoriesAndProducts.asp?idCategory=18">Medieval Literature</a><br/>BIC Class: DSBB<br/>Price: £60<br/><a href="http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14422">Purchase from Boydell and Brewer</a></p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Contents</h3>
</td>
<td>
<p><img alt="Cover of the book 'English Vernacular Minuscule from Æthelred to Cnut'" height="300" src="http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/catalog/bigs/9781843843696.jpg" title="Book Cover" width="198"/></p>
<p> </p>
</td>
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<ol>
<li>Introduction</li>
<li>Background</li>
<li>Attributions of Origin</li>
<li>Scribal Change in Bookhands and Charters: The 'Tall and Narrow' Hands</li>
<li>Scribal Continuity in Bookhands and Charters: The 'Square Influenced' Hands</li>
<li>Glosses and Scribbles</li>
<li>Conclusion: Change and Continuity in Early English Vernacular Minuscule</li>
<li>Appendix: List of Scribal Hands</li>
<li>Glossary</li>
</ol>
<h3> </h3>
<h3> </h3>
</blockquote>Objectivity and Evidence: DigiPal at HUMlab, Umeå2013-12-02T16:17:05+00:002014-07-04T09:39:30+00:00Peter A. Stokeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/pstokes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/objectivity-and-evidence-digipal-at-humlab-umea/<p>I will be presenting a seminar on DigiPal at HUMlab in Umeå, Sweden, at 13:15 Swedish time (CET) on Wednesday, December 4. The seminar will be streamed live at <a href="http://live.humlab.umu.se/">http://live.humlab.umu.se/</a> and more details about the series are available from the <a href="http://blog.humlab.umu.se/?p=5099">HUMlab blog</a>. I will be presenting the DigiPal project and especially its rationale in the context of Digital Humanities and the desire for 'scientific' approaches. The full abstract is as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Digital Humanities has sometimes been described as a ‘metadiscipline’, insofar as it involves methods, approaches and issues which apply directly to many different research areas in the Humanities. For example, bringing computers to the Humanities has raised questions such as the nature of evidence in Humanities arguments, the desirability or otherwise of quantitative methods in this, and the role (if any) of objectivity. Certainly these questions are not new – they have been discussed actively for decades or even centuries – but they have reemerged with new urgency in recent years partly because of technological developments.</p>
<p>A good example of this is palaeography, where a long-standing debate over whether the field should or can be ‘scientific’ has been reignited in part due to the widespread advent of digital images and the computing power to process them. The resulting burst of work in ‘computational’ palaeography has found very limited acceptance in the field, raising the question where the ‘traditional’ palaeographer is in this new field of ‘digital palaeography’. In this seminar I will therefore focus on these questions, looking at how they have been addressed in the DigiPal project and how they apply them to Digital Humanities more generally. These will include quantitative and qualitative approaches and the desire for objectivity, but also questions regarding what Humanities scholars might want from computers, a possible disjunction between computational ‘answers’ and the humanists’ need for meaning, and even what it means to digitize content at all.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you can't be there in person then do tune in to the live broadcast.</p>Programme for DigiPal Symposium: Monday 16th September 20132013-09-01T14:28:23+00:002014-07-03T23:04:51+00:00Stewart J. Brookeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/sbrookes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/programme2013/<p><strong>Date:</strong> Monday 16th September 2013</p>
<p><strong>Venue:</strong> King's College London, Strand WC2R 2LS: Room S-3.20</p>
<p><strong>Co-sponsor:</strong> Centre for Late Antique & Medieval studies, KCL<br/><br/>With great delight, the DigiPal team at the Department of Digital Humanities (King's College London) announce the programme for their third Symposium. This year's theme is the computer-assisted study of medieval manuscripts, and we have a range of papers covering language, manual and automatic script analysis, on-line curation, music notation, image retrieval and palaeography (of course!). </p>
<p>Places are disappearing rather rapidly, so if you'd like to attend, then please send an email to digipal [at] kcl.ac.uk, including your details as you would like them to appear on your name badge. Oh, and do let us know if you are vegetarian.</p>
<p>Looking forward to seeing you later this month,</p>
<p>Stewart Brookes and Peter Stokes</p>
<p><br/><strong>Programme</strong></p>
<p>9.30-9.50 Coffee & registration</p>
<p>9.50 Introduction</p>
<p><strong>10.00-11.15: Session 1: Manuscripts and the Digital Age</strong></p>
<p>1. (10.00-10.20) -- Sarah Biggs and Julian Harrison (British Library): "Beyond the Reading Room: Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age"</p>
<p>2. (10.25-10.45) -- Tony Harris (University of Cambridge) : "Getting to the ‘Hart’ of the Matter – Digitally Speaking"</p>
<p>3. (10.50-11.10) -- Samantha Blickhan (Royal Holloway, University of London: "Musical Perception and Digital Surrogates: On Using E-Resources for Teaching Early Music Notation"</p>
<p><strong>11.15-11.40 Coffee</strong></p>
<p><strong>11.40-12.55: Session II: Letter-forms</strong><strong></strong></p>
<p>4. (11.40-12.00) -- Jacob Thaisen (University of Stavanger): "A Survey of Middle English Letter-Forms"</p>
<p>5. (12.05-12.25) -- Peter Stokes (King's College London): "What is DigiPal, Really?"</p>
<p>6. (12.30-12.50) -- Stewart Brookes (King's College London):: "So Long and Thanks For All the F-shaped 'y's"</p>
<p><strong>12.55-14.00 Lunch </strong></p>
<p><strong>14.00-15.50: Session III: Digital Methods</strong></p>
<p>7. (14.00-14.30) Lambert Schomaker (University of Groningen): "Computer Methods for Handwriting Analysis"</p>
<p>8. (14.35-14.55) Jean-Paul van Oosten (University of Groningen): "Word Image Retrieval from Historical Handwritten Document Collections: The Monk System"</p>
<p>9. (15.00-15.20) Vincent Christlein (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg): "A Letter Driven Writer Identification in Medieval Papal Charters"</p>
<p>10. (15.25-15.45) Eleanor Anthony (University of Mississippi): "From the Archimedes’ Palimpsest to the Vercelli Book: Dual Correlation Pattern Recognition and Probabilistic Network Approaches to Palaeography in Damaged Manuscripts."</p>
<p><strong>15.50-16.15 Coffee</strong></p>
<p><strong>16.15-17.25: Session IV: Analysing Letters</strong></p>
<p>11. (16.15-16.35) -- Dominique Stutzmann: (French National Centre for Scientific Research): Automatic Letter-form Identification in the ORIFLAMMS project"</p>
<p>12. (16.40-17.00) -- David Ganz (University of Notre Dame and University of Cambridge.): "'Polygraphism': the Scribe Who Can Write Several Scripts"</p>
<p>13. (17.05-17.25) -- Tessa Webber (University of Cambridge): "The Analysis of Letters: Form, Shape and Stroke" </p>
<p>17.30-18.00 <strong>Roundtable discussion</strong> with Jane Roberts (Institute of English Studies) and Marc Smith (École Nationale des Chartes)</p>
<p><strong><br/></strong></p>Registration Opens for DigiPal Symposium: Monday 16th September 20132013-08-02T14:28:12+00:002014-07-04T12:02:13+00:00Stewart J. Brookeshttp://www.digipal.eu/blog/author/sbrookes/http://www.digipal.eu/blog/registration/<h3>Breaking news: Jane Roberts (Insitute of English Studies) has been added to the list of speakers. Full programme soon.</h3>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Monday 16th September 2013</p>
<p><strong>Event:</strong> DigiPal Symposium III</p>
<p><strong>Co-sponsor:</strong> Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, King's College London</p>
<p><strong>Location:</strong> King's College London, Strand WC2R 2LS</p>
<p>Dear all,</p>
<p>It is with great delight that the DigiPal team (Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London) announce that registration is now open for the third DigiPal Symposium (list of speakers below).</p>
<p>Attendance is free and open to all, but places are limited and so registration is essential.</p>
<p>As we're celebrating the relaunch of our website and database, we're pleased to offer a *free* sandwich-style lunch to the first 80 participants who register. Who said there's no such thing as a "free lunch"? I guess those who dilly and dally before registering ;-)</p>
<p><strong>How do I register?</strong></p>
<p>To register, send an email to digipal [at] kcl.ac.uk, including your details as you would like them to appear on your name badge. Registration is likely to close on Friday 6th September 2013. Of course, if you want to be in with a chance of the coveted free lunch, then we recommend registering as soon as possible. Oh, and do please let us know if you are vegetarian.</p>
<p>Looking forward to seeing you in September,</p>
<p>Stewart Brookes and Peter Stokes</p>
<p><strong>Speakers</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Eleanor Anthony (University of Mississippi): "From the Archimedes’ Palimpsest to the Vercelli Book: Dual Correlation Pattern Recognition and Probabilistic Network Approaches to Palaeography in Damaged Manuscripts."<br/> </li>
<li>Sarah Biggs and Julian Harrison (British Library): "Beyond the Reading Room: Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age"<br/> </li>
<li>Samantha Blickhan (Royal Holloway, University of London): "Musical Perception and Digital Surrogates: On Using E-Resources for Teaching Early Music Notation"<br/> </li>
<li>Stewart Brookes (King's College London): "So Long and Thanks for All the F-shaped 'y's"<br/><br/></li>
<li>Vincent Christlein (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg): "A Letter Driven Writer Identification in Medieval Papal Charters" </li>
<li>
<p>David Ganz (University of Notre Dame and University of Cambridge.): "'Polygraphism': the Scribe Who Can Write Several Scripts"</p>
</li>
<li>Tony Harris (University of Cambridge): "Getting to the ‘Hart’ of the Matter – Digitally Speaking"<br/> </li>
<li>Lambert Schomaker (University of Groningen): "Computer Methods for Handwriting Analysis"<br/> </li>
<li>Peter Stokes (King's College London): "What is DigiPal, Really?"<br/> </li>
<li>Dominique Stutzmann (French National Centre for Scientific Research): Automatic letter-form identification in the ORIFLAMMS project"<br/> </li>
<li>Jacob Thaisen (University of Stavanger): "A Survey of Middle English Letter-Forms"<br/> </li>
<li>Jean-Paul van Oosten (University of Groningen): "Word Image Retrieval from Historical Handwritten Document Collections: The Monk System"<br/> </li>
<li>Tessa Webber (University of Cambridge): "The Analysis of Letters: Form, Shape and Stroke"<br/> </li>
</ul>