Workshop: Linking Data and Digitizations for Medieval Manuscripts

Introduction

The workshop is organised in the framework of the ORD project e-codices linked Open Research Data and it is co-funded through the swissuniversities Open Science II programme.

Leading institution: UNIFR

PI: William Duba

Workshop dates: 3-4 February 2025

Place: UNIFR

Background

We stand at the beginning of the third generation of digital manuscript studies. The opening of the internet in the 1990s revolutionized the study of information technology, including medieval manuscripts. For over thirty years, institutions and individuals have been making available on the internet images and descriptions of medieval manuscripts. Improvements in imaging technology and interoperable frameworks gave rise to the current state of the art: digital manuscript libraries serving high-quality images with interoperable licenses and technologies, such as the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) that allow for the reuse of images and metadata around the internet, facilitating the work of portals and aggregators, and blurring the lines between data and their sources. While the goal of digitizing all medieval written sources remains distant, researchers today have access to a vast amount of our written patrimony in dematerialized form, fueling the so-called “material turn” in historical studies, and enabling intensive manuscript research.

As a result, in the constellation of manuscript research, the position of the digital surrogate has shifted from an end in itself to a gateway for further study. As we solve the problem of how users will find digitizations, a new one arises: as this publishing activity gives rise to new research and new analyses, how do we enable users to find these resources? How do we move from a situation where platforms offer interoperability to one where they are truly interoperable? The sudden and dramatic affordability of new techniques, such as multi-spectral imagery, paleoproteomics and paleogenomics promises a flood of data. How do we prepare for a data-rich future?

Workshop content

This workshop brings together from around Europe and North America representatives of many national digital manuscript libraries and portals, as well as of major manuscript-intensive research projects. The goal is to provide a survey of the present landscape and a roadmap for the future. The major manuscript platforms will present aspects of the Linked Open Data (LOD) work underway on their platforms: the current state of operation, the ontologies being used and being developed, and open problems, with an eye towards collaboration and interoperation across the ecosystem. The research projects will present their work, the LOD data component, and the challenges and promises of producing large amounts of Open Research Data in the current environment. A discussion will focus on concrete solutions for the present and strategic plans for the future.

Programme

Day 1: Platforms and the LOD Landscape

Tuesday, 3 February 2026

10:00-10:30

10:30-11:00

11:00-12:30

12:30-14:30

14:30-16:00

16:00-16:30

16:30-18:00

18:30

Coffee

Greetings

Presentations:

Handschriftenportal (Germany), [Eichenberger, Giel, Mackert]

Digital Scriptorium 2.0 (USA) [Coladangelo]

Lunch

Presentations:

 e-codicesNL (The Netherlands) [Teeuwen, van Renswoude]

 Biblissima (France) [Robineau]

Coffee

Presentations:

manuscripta.at (Austria) [Theisen, Theisen]

Cambridge Digital Library [Hawkins]

Dinner

Day 2: Research Projects and the ORD Tsunami

Wednesday, 4 February 2026

09:00-10:30

10:30-11:00

11:00-12:30

12:30-14:30

14:30-16:00

16:00-16:30

16:30-17:30

18:30

Presentations:

INSULAR (ERC Advanced Grant -  Leicester/ Göttingen) [Surjadi]

CODICUM (ERC Synergy Grant: Bergen-Odense-Copenhagen-Helsinki-Stockholm)

Coffee

Presentations:

RevLogRedux (ERC Synergy Grant: Geneva-Cambridge-Lille) [Padlina]

 Swiss and European ORD initiatives for Arts and Humanities: DARIAH-CH, SSHOC-CH and SENPro [Grisot]

Lunch

Round Table Discussion

Coffee

Conclusions

Dinner

Organiser

William Duba, Université de Fribourg/Freiburg