Workshop invitation: Textual editing workshops for undergraduates and postgraduates

 

We are looking for enthusiastic undergraduates and postgraduates from any discipline to take part in workshops in textual editing culminating in the publication of a citable transcription.

 

Sign up for a workshop: see below for details.

 

We are pleased to announce the fourth year of Bodleian Student Editions workshops, a collaboration between the Bodleian’s Department of Special Collections and Centre for Digital Scholarship, and Cultures of Knowledge, a project based at the Faculty of History.

There will be 6 standalone workshops taking place in the year 2019-20, two per term. Workshops are held in the Weston Library’s Centre for Digital Scholarship. Dates for each term will be announced in that term, and are as follows:

Michaelmas Term 2019

  • 10:00–16:30 Wednesday 3rd week, 30 October
  • 10:00–16:30 Thursday 7th week, 28 November

Hilary Term 2020 To be announced in Hilary

  • 10:00-16:30 Wednesday 3rd Week, 5th February
  • tbc

Trinity Term 2020 To be announced in Trinity

  • tbc
  • tbc

Textual editing is the process by which a manuscript reaches its audience in print or digital form. The texts we read in printed books are dependent on the choices of editors across the years, some obscured more than others. The past few years have seen an insurgence in interest in curated media, and the advent of new means of distribution has inspired increasingly charged debates about what is chosen to be edited, by whom and for whom.

These workshops give students the opportunity to examine these questions of research practice in a space designed around the sources at the heart of them. The Bodleian Libraries’ vast collections give students direct access to important ideas free from years of mediation, and to authorial processes in their entirety, while new digital tools allow greater space to showcase the lives of ordinary people who may not feature in traditional narrative history.

Our focus is on letters of the early modern period: a unique, obsolescent medium, by which the ideas which shaped our civilisation were communicated and developed. Participants will study previously unpublished manuscripts from Bodleian collections, working with Bodleian curators and staff of Cultures of Knowledge (http://www.culturesofknowledge.org), to produce a digital transcription, which will be published on the flagship resource site of Cultures of Knowledge, Early Modern Letters Online (http://emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk), as ‘Bodleian Student Editions’.

The sessions are standalone, but participants in previous workshops have gone on to further transcription work with Bodleian collections and with research projects around the country, as well as producing the first scholarship on some of the manuscripts by incorporating material in their own research (from undergraduate to doctorate level). The first-hand experience with primary sources, and citable transcription, extremely useful for those wishing to apply for postgraduate study in areas where this is valued: one participant successfully proceeded from a BA in Biological Sciences to an MA in Early Modern Literature on the basis of having attended.

The sessions provide a hands-on introduction to the following:

  1. Special Collections handling
  2. Palaeography and transcription
  3. Metadata curation, analysis, and input into Early Modern Letters Online
  4. Research and publication ethics
  5. Digital tools for scholarship and further training available

You can read about research conducted in previous workshops here.

Participation in the workshops is open to undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled at the University of Oxford in any subject and year, full-time or part-time. Eligibility includes visiting students who are registered as recognized students, and paying fees, but does not include informal visitors, postdoctoral researchers, or staff.

If you would like to participate, please contact Francesca Barr, Special Collections Administrator, francesca.barr@bodleian.ox.ac.uk, and include:

  1. your ox.ac.uk email address
  2. your department
  3. your level and year of study
  4. particular access requirements
  5. particular dietary requirements

Please note that owing to the workshops regularly being oversubscribed, we can only confirm places on this term’s workshops. You may register your interest in subsequent workshops, and will be notified of the dates for each term before they are advertised more widely.

The Bodleian Libraries welcome thoughts and queries from students of all levels on ways in which the use of archival material can facilitate your research. For an idea of the range of collections in the Weston, visit our current exhibitions in Blackwell Hall. Thinking 3D: Leonardo to the Present, in the Treasury gallery, tells the story of the development of three-dimensional communication over the last 500 years, showcasing techniques that revolutionised the dissemination of ideas in anatomy, architecture and astronomy and geometry and ultimately influenced how we perceive the world today. Talking Maps in the ST Lee Gallery is a celebration of maps and what they tell us about the places they depict and the people that make and use them. Drawing primarily on the Bodleian’s own unparalleled collection of more than 1.5 million maps – including the Gough Map (the first to show Great Britain in recognizable form), the Selden map (a late Ming map of the South China Sea, and fictional maps by CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien – it also features specially commissioned artworks and loans from artists and other institutions. Both exhibitions are free to attend and can be accessed through Blackwell Hall.

 

Welcome Japan Search to the web of Linked Open Data

Bodleian Libraries MS. Jap. c.4(R) depicts the character Urashima Taro, known to Japan Search as 水江浦島子

Japan Search is an aggregator, holding metadata on 17 million items from 38 databases related to Japanese cultural institutions. It is like a Japanese counterpart to Europeana. Hosted by the National Diet Library, it is currently in beta phase – not officially released yet – but already an impressive service. It’s of interest to a Wikimedian working in Oxford because it has been designed in an open way, with connection to other databases and applications built in from the outset.

Part of its database is a table of nearly 8000 named entities: these are artists, depicted entities and sometimes locations. Japan Search has its own system of identifiers based on Japanese names, but thankfully they have incorporated identifiers from other systems, including VIAF, BnF, British Museum, DBPedia, and Wikidata. Continue reading

Making Wikidata visible

→ Cet article en Français

I’ve been experimenting with a way to show how Wikidata represents knowledge; specifically how it makes pathways out of relationships between things. In a previous post I wrote about how Wikidata’s representation enables new pathways between entities. Since those pathways link into a giant web they offer new ways to discover existing collection objects. Now that I have been describing Oxford’s GLAM collections on Wikidata, we can show concrete examples of this expanding knowledge graph.

Normally with Wikidata we specify properties and get results that are identifiable things. For example if we ask for “female historians born in the 1730s with a biography in Electronic Enlightenment”, we get Catherine Macaulay. Here I’m using queries that specify a group of things and request the properties connecting them. So we get a tiny fragment of the Wikidata knowledge graph (which right now has just over 54 million people, places, publications, object and concepts). We can see how different kinds of data (biographical, bibliographic, and catalogue data) are combined in the same model. I’ve captured these graphs as screenshots, but I recommend clicking through to the live query where you get a draggable, stretchy graph. Continue reading

Detailed depictions with IIIF, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons

Extract from “High Street Oxford.” Ashmolean Museum WA2016.48

The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) is a standard, developed by a consortium including the Bodleian Libraries, that allows images and associated metadata to be shared across the web. It’s used by many sites including Digital Bodleian and Wikimedia’s image server, Wikimedia Commons.

As of November this year, Wikidata can point to the IIIF manifests associated with a digitised object (example near the foot of this page). However, the opportunity of Wikidata and IIIF is not just about discoverability of the IIIF data itself. Included in IIIF is the ability to address a specific rectangular region of an image with a URL. Wikidata can use this to express statements about part of an image

Anyone familiar with Turner’s “High Street, Oxford” will recognise several landmarks included in the scene. In this sense, there is a lot of structure in the image that is obvious to humans but not naturally captured in the painting’s digital representation (image + catalogue record). My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to express in open data not just that the painting depicts the Church of St. Mary the Virgin but that a specific part of the image depicts the church. Continue reading

Workshop invitation: Textual editing workshops for undergraduates and postgraduates

A collaboration between the Bodleian’s Department of Special Collections and Centre for Digital Scholarship, and Cultures of Knowledge, a project based at the Faculty of History

We are looking for enthusiastic undergraduates and postgraduates from any discipline to take part in workshops in textual editing culminating in the publication of a citable transcription.

 

Sign up for a workshop: see below for details.

 

After two successful series, we are entering the third year of Bodleian Student Editions workshops, held in the Weston Library’s Centre for Digital Scholarship. There will be 6 standalone workshops taking place in the year 2018-19, two per term, on the following dates:

Michaelmas Term 2018

  • 10:00–16:30 Tuesday 5th week, 6 November
  • 10:00–16:30 Wednesday 8th week, 28 November

Hilary Term 2019

  • 10:00–16:30 Wednesday 3rd week, 30 January
  • 10:00–16:30 Thursday 7th week, 28 February 

Trinity Term 201To be announced in Trinity

  • 10:00-16:30 Wednesday 8th Week, 19th June

Textual editing is the process by which a manuscript reaches its audience in print or digital form. The texts we read in printed books are dependent on the choices of editors across the years, some obscured more than others. The past few years have seen an insurgence in interest in curated media, and the advent of new means of distribution has inspired increasingly charged debates about what is chosen to be edited, by whom and for whom.

These workshops give students the opportunity to examine these questions of research practice in a space designed around the sources at the heart of them. The Bodleian Libraries’ vast collections give students direct access to important ideas free from years of mediation, and to authorial processes in their entirety, while new digital tools allow greater space to showcase the lives of ordinary people who may not feature in traditional narrative history.

Our focus is on letters of the early modern period: a unique, obsolescent medium, by which the ideas which shaped our civilisation were communicated and developed. Participants will study previously unpublished manuscripts from Bodleian collections, working with Bodleian curators and staff of Cultures of Knowledge (http://www.culturesofknowledge.org), to produce a digital transcription, which will be published on the flagship resource site of Cultures of Knowledge, Early Modern Letters Online (http://emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk), as ‘Bodleian Student Editions’.

The sessions are standalone, but participants in previous workshops have gone on to further transcription work with Bodleian collections and with research projects around the country, as well as producing the first scholarship on some of the manuscripts by incorporating material in their own research (from undergraduate to doctorate level). The first-hand experience with primary sources, and citable transcription, extremely useful for those wishing to apply for postgraduate study in areas where this is valued: one participant successfully proceeded from a BA in Biological Sciences to an MA in Early Modern Literature on the basis of having attended.

The sessions provide a hands-on introduction to the following:

  1. Special Collections handling
  2. Palaeography and transcription
  3. Metadata curation, analysis, and input into Early Modern Letters Online
  4. Research and publication ethics
  5. Digital tools for scholarship and further training available

You can read about research conducted in previous workshops here. To hear about future textual editing workshops and other events as they are advertised, please join the digital scholarship mailing list.

Participation is open to students registered for any course at the University of Oxford. If you would like to participate, please contact Francesca Barr, Special Collections Administrator, francesca.barr@bodleian.ox.ac.uk, and include:

  1. your ox.ac.uk email address
  2. your department
  3. your level and year of study
  4. particular access requirements
  5. particular dietary requirements

Please note that owing to the workshops being oversubscribed both years running, we can only confirm places on this term’s workshops. You may register your interest in subsequent workshops, and will be notified of the dates for each term before they are advertised more widely.

The Bodleian Libraries welcome thoughts and queries from students of all levels on ways in which the use of archival material can facilitate your research. For an idea of the range of collections in the Weston, visit the exhibition Sappho to Suffrage: Women Who Dared in the Treasury gallery in Blackwell Hall (http://treasures.bodleian.ox.ac.uk), which showcases some of the Bodleian’s most treasured items in celebration of 100 years of suffrage. Our current flagship exhibition, Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth is open in the ST Lee Gallery until 28 October; entry is free but timed, and tickets are available at the Information Desk in Blackwell Hall, or online for a £1 booking fee (https://tolkien.bodleian.ox.ac.uk).

Conference announcement—Digitizing the Stage 2019

What: Digitizing the Stage

When: 15–18 July 2019

Where: Weston Library Lecture Theatre (map)

Registration: required—please see the conference website to sign up for notices

Together with the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Bodleian Libraries’ Centre for Digital Scholarship is delighted to announce that Digitizing the Stage will return next summer. The event will take place on 15–18 July 2019 at the Weston Library. There will be a small pre-conference workshop preceding the three-day, single-stream conference, which will have a renewed emphasis on performance. More information can be found on https://www.digitizingthestage.com.

The inaugural conference in 2017 gathered scholars, librarians, theatre professionals, and others in a convivial and productive series of talks and demonstrations highlighting digital explorations of the early modern theatre archive. The success of the event was due in no small part to the energy, creativity, and thoughtfulness of the participants, for which we remain profoundly appreciative. Thank you for your interest and participation.

If you would like to stay informed about conference developments, including the upcoming call for proposals, please email the Folger Shakespeare Library via digitalconf@folger.edu to be added to the 2019 mailing list.

Translating a blog post into structured data

Timur Beg Gurkhani (1336-1405) plays a small role in our story. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons

Recently my Bodleian colleague Alasdair Watson posted an announcement about an illuminated manuscript that is newly available online. To get the most long-term value out of the announcement, I decided to express it as Linked Open Data by representing its content in Wikidata. This blog post goes through that process. Continue reading

Workshop—Digital Delius: Editing, Interpretation, and Cataloguing

We regret that this workshop has been cancelled. Please contact the organizers (see below) to find out more about their work on Digital Delius.

This workshop is open to anyone conducting or interested in pursuing research in music and musicology, who would like to learn more about using digital techniques. Undergraduates and postgraduates are most welcome.

Book a place by emailing Joanna Bullivant: please see below for details.

 

What: Digital Delius: Editing, Interpretation, and Cataloguing—workshop

When: 10:00–17:00, Thursday 11 October 2018

Where: Centre for Digital Scholarship, Weston Library (map)

Open to all

Free

Registration is required: please email Joanna Bullivant (joanna.bullivant@music.ox.ac.uk) by 1 October 2018 with your name, email address, and access and dietary requirements.

How might digital technologies enrich your musicological research in editing, interpretation, and cataloguing, and help you to present your work to others?

We hear increasingly about the importance and possibilities of digital methodologies, but it is not always easy to know how to go about using digital techniques in tandem with more traditional research, or what the benefits of these techniques might be. This workshop uses the ongoing project ‘Digital Delius’ as a case study, showing how a variety of digital techniques and software are being used to cast light on such critical areas of Delius research as sources and variants, editing, interpretation, and cataloguing. The aim is to introduce work in progress and provide a series of guided practical exercises to help participants to gain awareness of skills and methods that can be applied in their own research.

Convenors

Joanna Bullivant is a musicologist, currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford. She has created the forthcoming digital catalogue of Delius’s works, and is part of the team creating an interactive digital exhibition on Delius for the British Library as part of their new Discovering Music web space.

David Lewis is a researcher based at the Oxford e-Research Centre and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He has recently worked on projects at Goldsmiths, University of London, Universität des Saarlandes and Universiteit Utrecht. He has worked on online resources for instrumental music (Electronic Corpus of Lute Music), music theory (Johannes Tinctoris: Complete Theoretical Works and Thesaurus Musicarum Italicarum) and work catalogues (Delius Catalogue of Works). His current research explores uses of Linked Data to support and extend the exploration and sharing of musical information and research.

REGISTRATION

To register, please email Joanna Bullivant (joanna.bullivant@music.ox.ac.uk) by 1 October 2018 with:

  • Your name
  • Current status/research interests (undergraduate, postgraduate etc)
  • Your email address
  • Access or dietary requirements

Research Uncovered—Romantic poetry and technical breakthrough: the Charles Harpur Critical Archive

Book a place!

Paul Eggert
What: Romantic poetry and technical breakthrough: the Charles Harpur Critical Archive

Who: Paul Eggert

When: 13:00—14:00, Wednesday 7 March 2018

Where: Weston Library Lecture Theatre (map)

Access: open to all

Admission: free

Registration: required

This talk will show a new technical solution to an abiding problem – presenting a large body of literary works in multiple versions. It has been trialled in The Charles Harpur Critical Archive, due to be published in June.

Harpur’s work in New South Wales in the mid-19th century makes a perfect case study of the technology. His verses made 900 appearances in the press, but publishing opportunities for him other than in newspapers were almost non-existent. A digital solution addresses the textual problems that defeated the attempts to capture the full range of his poetic achievement in book form.

Paul Eggert is the Martin J Svaglic Endowed Professor of Textual Studies at Loyola University Chicago, and former president of the Society for Textual Scholarship.

This public lecture is co-hosted by the Bodleian Libraries’ Centre for the Study of the Book and Centre for Digital Scholarship.

Some ways Wikidata can improve search and discovery

I have written in the past about how Wikidata enables entity-based browsing, but search is still necessary and it is worth considering how a semantic web database can be useful to a search engine index.

This post is about three ways Wikidata could help search and discovery applications, without replacing them: 1) providing more or less specific terms (hypernyms and hyponyms), 2) providing synonyms for a search term, 3) structuring a thesaurus of topics to provide meaningful connections. I end with the real-world example of Quora.com who are using Wikidata to manage a huge user-generated topic list.

Hypernyms and hyponyms

Continue reading