9 ms·

"They are also working to digitise the manuscript, in collaboration with the Arnamagnæan Institute." Send it to me. I'll have it digitized in about an hour. Ju

"They are also working to digitise the manuscript, in collaboration with the Arnamagnæan Institute." Send it to me. I'll have it digitized in about an hour. Just turn the pages and click with my phone. Yes, I know that professional archivists would rather give birth to a goat than do that, but consider: 1. It's the text that's important, and a handheld phone camera captures that just fine. Try it and see. 2. It's immediate. 3. It's cheap. 4. The worry about damaging it irretrievably will be alleviated, as now a backup exists.

LeoPanthera 8y ago
Stop trying to re-solve already-solved problems.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  Are they solved? The quote indicated it had not been digitized and implied it would take significant effort. The Vatican library has never been digitized, and nobody really knows what all is in there. The HP library burned down before anybody digitized it.
  - snvzz 8y ago
    >The Vatican library has never been digitized, and nobody really knows what all is in there. Seems like a clear case where public interest should override private property.
    - Freak_NL 8y ago
      I'm sure the citizens of the Vatican City State will rise up and demand public access any day now.
      - darkpuma 8y ago
        Maybe the sovereignty of the Vatican should be clawed back. I wouldn't be the first of Mussolini's decisions to be undone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateran_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateran_Treaty
      - jaco8 8y ago
        They even might find books by Otto Corvin ....
    - skookumchuck 8y ago
      The reason given for not digitizing it was "too expensive". That's the professional archivers talking again, overlooking that everyone has a digitizing machine in their pocket. I wonder how many more libraries will get lost before people start being pragmatic about this.
      - keithnoizu 8y ago
        the issue is your lay people will damage the books, or may not have access to the imaging technologies you need to read otherwise illegible text. For example in some cases with faded ink or very weak paper x-ray may be applied.
        skookumchuck 8y ago
        Oh phooey. Sure, some of the books need special treatment. But I'm sure the vast majority are more than amenable to click turn page click turn page click turn page with one hand on the camera and the other turning pages. I've done it myself for things like family albums, scrapbooks, etc. Piece of cake. All this handwringing about needing 10000 dpi scans and advanced imaging technology means no scans will get done, and there'll be a lot of sobbing and rending of hair when the next collection gets flooded, lost, chewed by mice, rotted to dust, stolen or goes up in smoke.
        darkpuma 8y ago
        I agree, I think these professional archivists are letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. There is no real reason they couldn't give a large team of interns armed with smartphones a crash course in how to turn the pages of a book without tearing them and set them loose digitizing entire libraries in days; then afterwards they could take their time with their high powered x-ray 10 gazillion dpi scanners or whatever the hell they'd like to use. What we're seeing from archivists is a prime example of gatekeeping and job security.
        skookumchuck 8y ago
  - Mad_Mac 8y ago
    http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/ESA_and_Vatican_work_to_preserve_heritage_data http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/ESA_an... >Now, with the benefit of today’s technological era, the Library is digitalising their entire collection of manuscripts, which includes over 80 000 codices, mostly from the Middle Ages and the Humanism Period. https://digi.vatlib.it https://digi.vatlib.it
    - sramsay 8y ago
      This is such an exciting project. And the phrase "the Middle Ages and the Humanism Period" is a bit misleading, because what we may find are transcriptions of ancient texts long considered lost. One of the most flatly incredible manuscript discoveries of the nineteenth century is a short treatise called the "Didache." We knew that such a thing existed, because writers as early as the 3rd century mention it, but it was presumed lost. An 11th century manuscript of it was found in a library in 1875, and most scholars now believe that the text dates to the first century, making it the oldest known Christian "catechism" (one which, intriguingly, seems to stand outside the Pauline tradition). Obviously, this was and is an absolutely amazing thing for students of late antiquity in general and early Christianity in particular, and it had been sitting there in plain sight (so to speak) for centuries. It would surprise me not at all if we find similar things in the Vatican collection.
breck 8y ago
Not sure why this is being downvoted. Where is the link so I can see the digitized version? This should be the first step. I’m guessing they’ve done this and it’s just a click baity article. But if not before even talking to journalists they should have taken photos of every page and put them on a GitHub or other similar place. Otherwise they get an A+ for hilarious hypocrisy.
- akadruid1 8y ago
  I agree, I logged in just to upvote the parent. Any copy is better than no copy, and if you don't risk damaging the original, I don't see the downside. This pragmatic preservation was already on my mind because of something that happened last night. I was driving on the motorway when a drunk driver caused a huge high speed crash right in front of me. I have a dash cam,and it captured the whole thing. The police officer on the scene used his body cam to film the incident from the screen of my dash cam. I'm sure it was a terrible copy, but it was an immediate backup. Of course he then collected my dash cam as evidence too. Their digital evidence team must be on point too because I got a thank you email within a couple of hours which said they had already successfully downloaded the original recording and were sending my dash cam back to me. Historians could learn a lot from this, ordinary police officers operating in difficult conditions are doing a better job of preservation than historians who's only job is preserving and studying historical artifacts under much easier conditions.
opan 8y ago
I've always hated bloated PDFs that are essentially just images instead of text, but if you could release something as you describe, you could then split up the work between the whole world and have it properly retyped much faster. Maybe even get some translations out of it too. Perhaps the dreaded copyright laws may ruin this pipe dream, though.
- 0815test 8y ago
  Manuscripts are very hard to transcribe, and only get harder the older they are. You can already split up transcription work for printed public domain texts at the "Distributed proofreaders" website, which feeds Project Gutenberg -- Wikisource has a similar subproject, albeit one that's not quite as advanced. But neither of these will help for something as complex as this.

LeoPanthera 8y ago

Stop trying to re-solve already-solved problems.

skookumchuck 8y ago
Are they solved? The quote indicated it had not been digitized and implied it would take significant effort. The Vatican library has never been digitized, and nobody really knows what all is in there. The HP library burned down before anybody digitized it.
- snvzz 8y ago
  >The Vatican library has never been digitized, and nobody really knows what all is in there. Seems like a clear case where public interest should override private property.
  - Freak_NL 8y ago
    I'm sure the citizens of the Vatican City State will rise up and demand public access any day now.
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      Maybe the sovereignty of the Vatican should be clawed back. I wouldn't be the first of Mussolini's decisions to be undone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateran_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateran_Treaty
    - jaco8 8y ago
      They even might find books by Otto Corvin ....
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    The reason given for not digitizing it was "too expensive". That's the professional archivers talking again, overlooking that everyone has a digitizing machine in their pocket. I wonder how many more libraries will get lost before people start being pragmatic about this.
    - keithnoizu 8y ago
      the issue is your lay people will damage the books, or may not have access to the imaging technologies you need to read otherwise illegible text. For example in some cases with faded ink or very weak paper x-ray may be applied.
      - skookumchuck 8y ago
        Oh phooey. Sure, some of the books need special treatment. But I'm sure the vast majority are more than amenable to click turn page click turn page click turn page with one hand on the camera and the other turning pages. I've done it myself for things like family albums, scrapbooks, etc. Piece of cake. All this handwringing about needing 10000 dpi scans and advanced imaging technology means no scans will get done, and there'll be a lot of sobbing and rending of hair when the next collection gets flooded, lost, chewed by mice, rotted to dust, stolen or goes up in smoke.
        darkpuma 8y ago
        I agree, I think these professional archivists are letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. There is no real reason they couldn't give a large team of interns armed with smartphones a crash course in how to turn the pages of a book without tearing them and set them loose digitizing entire libraries in days; then afterwards they could take their time with their high powered x-ray 10 gazillion dpi scanners or whatever the hell they'd like to use. What we're seeing from archivists is a prime example of gatekeeping and job security.
        skookumchuck 8y ago
- Mad_Mac 8y ago
  http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/ESA_and_Vatican_work_to_preserve_heritage_data http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/ESA_an... >Now, with the benefit of today’s technological era, the Library is digitalising their entire collection of manuscripts, which includes over 80 000 codices, mostly from the Middle Ages and the Humanism Period. https://digi.vatlib.it https://digi.vatlib.it
  - sramsay 8y ago
    This is such an exciting project. And the phrase "the Middle Ages and the Humanism Period" is a bit misleading, because what we may find are transcriptions of ancient texts long considered lost. One of the most flatly incredible manuscript discoveries of the nineteenth century is a short treatise called the "Didache." We knew that such a thing existed, because writers as early as the 3rd century mention it, but it was presumed lost. An 11th century manuscript of it was found in a library in 1875, and most scholars now believe that the text dates to the first century, making it the oldest known Christian "catechism" (one which, intriguingly, seems to stand outside the Pauline tradition). Obviously, this was and is an absolutely amazing thing for students of late antiquity in general and early Christianity in particular, and it had been sitting there in plain sight (so to speak) for centuries. It would surprise me not at all if we find similar things in the Vatican collection.

breck 8y ago

Not sure why this is being downvoted. Where is the link so I can see the digitized version? This should be the first step. I’m guessing they’ve done this and it’s just a click baity article. But if not before even talking to journalists they should have taken photos of every page and put them on a GitHub or other similar place. Otherwise they get an A+ for hilarious hypocrisy.

akadruid1 8y ago
I agree, I logged in just to upvote the parent. Any copy is better than no copy, and if you don't risk damaging the original, I don't see the downside. This pragmatic preservation was already on my mind because of something that happened last night. I was driving on the motorway when a drunk driver caused a huge high speed crash right in front of me. I have a dash cam,and it captured the whole thing. The police officer on the scene used his body cam to film the incident from the screen of my dash cam. I'm sure it was a terrible copy, but it was an immediate backup. Of course he then collected my dash cam as evidence too. Their digital evidence team must be on point too because I got a thank you email within a couple of hours which said they had already successfully downloaded the original recording and were sending my dash cam back to me. Historians could learn a lot from this, ordinary police officers operating in difficult conditions are doing a better job of preservation than historians who's only job is preserving and studying historical artifacts under much easier conditions.

opan 8y ago

I've always hated bloated PDFs that are essentially just images instead of text, but if you could release something as you describe, you could then split up the work between the whole world and have it properly retyped much faster. Maybe even get some translations out of it too. Perhaps the dreaded copyright laws may ruin this pipe dream, though.

0815test 8y ago
Manuscripts are very hard to transcribe, and only get harder the older they are. You can already split up transcription work for printed public domain texts at the "Distributed proofreaders" website, which feeds Project Gutenberg -- Wikisource has a similar subproject, albeit one that's not quite as advanced. But neither of these will help for something as complex as this.