Digitization and Historical Research

Imagine a digital working environment where high-definition scanned documents may be summoned at will, and are worked on simultaneously by several historians located in different parts of the world. The document functions not only as a visual facsimile of the original, but also as a ’smart text’.

What does this mean exactly? Let’s say you are a medieval historian, interested in a 7th century manuscript. The digital document not only allows you access to a high-resolution copy of a document you would have been forced to travel half way across the world to see, but is linked to all the relevant literature pertaining to the manuscript. Any word in the text may be instantly translated by a Medieval Latin dictionary, any obscure abbreviation automatically defined, and all the secondary literature written about the document is available at the click of a mouse button. If you want to tag a certain sentence and attach a comment for a member of your work group, that is also possible. Finally, the software can learn your field of interest and suggest material for further reading.

Martianus Capella, Marriage of Philology and Mercury (Wikimedia)

This is just a small example of the future vision of digitization and what it can do for historical research. An ambitious Dutch project, currently underway, already provides scans, transcriptions and glosses for a ninth-century manuscript of Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (‘On the marriage of Philology and Mercury’).

Despite large strides being made, the vision of a platform integrating and coordinating the various existing databases is not yet a reality for historians. Where are we today in terms of reaching this goal? Digital libraries differ from their traditional counterparts in several ways. A physical library can be cataloged according to Dewey, or the Library of Congress methods. When it comes to digital libraries, every project ‘reinvents the wheel’, as it were, and creates a cataloging system incompatible with other ongoing digitization enterprises. This is a problem, because the vision of digitization requires the merging of as many databases as possible to make it effective. When digital archives are unable to work in concert, the entire point of digitization is defeated.

One possible solution for this concern is standardization. By standardizing the entire corpus of scanned documents worldwide, a uniform archive may be created, thus allowing for easy access. But achieving this would require a monumental effort on the side of librarians and software engineers, slaving away to modify the already existent databases. A smarter solution would be to create a work environment which would link the various databases together, and would know how to handle the various standards used by different libraries. This, of course, requires the cooperation of as many digital archives as possible, something that as of today has not occurred.

An initial attempt at such an enterprise is the EU’s Discovery Project, integrating two components, dubbed Philosource and Philospace. The idea behind Philosource is to link together a large number of digital libraries dealing with philosophy, making them accessible through one platform. Philospace acts as a second layer on top of Philosource, consisting of a network of software apps located on researchers’ desktops, allowing for the creation of a shared work environment, incorporating meta-text and annotations to be shared by the research community working on a certain document.

In effect, the bodies regulating today’s digitization efforts are commercial entities, such as Google. In many respects, this is a good thing, because this sort of solution does not require funding by research bodies, which are already financially strained, and the outcome is generally made available to everyone. However, leaving the initiative up to big business also has its drawbacks – commercial bodies are seldom motivated to digitize obscure manuscripts of the sort historians find interesting. Theirs is a wide approach, where historical research requires an in-depth look at digitization. For such an ambitious program to take place, what is needed is a working financial model, allowing universities to participate in, and profit from such an endeavor.

University and research institution libraries spend increasing portions of their annual budgets on subscriber services for online resources. It is only logical that if a large number of university libraries pool their resources, a financial model can be worked out, granting access to as many scholars as possible. This model could have a social facet as well; scholars from poorer countries would enjoy cheaper access to these databases, and the majority of the financial burden would be shouldered by wealthier institutions. Since the money for digitization is already being spent by universities, it stands to reason that a more efficient, egalitarian and productive method would benefit not only individual scholars, but the discipline as a whole.

Tags: digital, digitization, discovery, library, manuscript, martianus capella, philosource, philospace