Digital Scriptorium

Digital Scriptorium

Digital Scriptorium, a collection of digital images from medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, is quite simply the most marvelous digital collection that I have encountered thus far. It basically tells you everything that you might want to know about these digital objects, from how they were digitized to how they will be maintained in the future.

Collection Principles: The principle behind the selection of manuscripts is clearly defined. The website states the Digital Scriptorium focuses on MSS signed and dated by the scribe who copied them. Their goal is to make available MSS that are generally considered "unlikely candidates for reproduction" and therefore, without DS, would only be available within the institutions that own them. Attention is given to copyright issues concerning the objects, as well as to privacy issues connected with the viewer. Since the DS incorporates MSS from a number of institutions, it fosters a national and international initiative to make resources available to a wider community.

Object Characteristics: Digital images of the physical objects are displayed in either a thumbnail (128 x 192 pixels), small (512 x 768 pixels), medium (1024 x 1536 pixels), or large (2048 x 3072 pixels) format using the jpg file type. There is no zoom capability within the different sizes, but the large format provides as much detail as most users would require. The objects each have persistent unique identifiers, are digitized according to standards of best practice, and have ample associated metadata.

Metadata: A bevy of information is available concerning the way in which these objects were digitized. The technical information page associated with DS contains information on managing and contributing DS data, tools for contributing DS data via XM, guidelines for contributing DS images (including requirements for imaging standards, such as the inclusion of standard reference targets, file naming conventions, lighting, scanning, and post-photography processing). The metadata concerning the physical objects that these digital images represent is extensive, including such things as the contributing library's catalog record, the place and date of MS production, a physical description, country of origin, region, script, number of text within the MS, and number of scribes. Some individual images are accompanied by notes pertaining to the contents of the page, characteristics of special interest (such as ownership marks or bindings), or other items of note. As noted previously, conditions of use are specified in another part of the website.

Intended Audience: The "About Digital Scriptorium" page states that "Digital Scriptorium looks to the needs of a very diverse community of medievalists, classicists, musicologists, paleographers, diplomatists and art historians." DS is really intended to be a tool for scholars. Most of the MSS digitized would not be of much interest to the general public; many of the texts were written by individuals that none of specialists would recognize, and few of the MSS contain the kind of fantastic illumination and "decoration" that is widely appealing. However, in the words of one respondent to the DS survey, "For those of us who can't hop over to Europe every time we'd like to, this is an important resource to help keep our research interests alive and moving forward."