Presentation at the Medieval Academy of America meeting, 2013, held in Knoxville, TN for the roundtable discussion: Back to the Future: Exploring New Digital Initiatives in Medieval Studies, sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America Graduate Student Committee

1. DIGITAL
MEDIEVAL
COMMONS
Digital Library Infrastructure,
Interoperability,
and Medieval Studies
Benjamin Albritton
Digital Medieval Program Manager
blalbrit@stanford.edu
@bla222

2. Imagine A Viewer…
Web Application – Institution A
“Virtual” Collection of
Distributed Resources, e.g.,
Image 1 Image 2 Image 3
• Teaching Collection
Institution Institution Institution
• Cross-Repository Search
A B C
• Personal Research
Resources Collected
from the Web
Image 4 Image 5 Image 6
DescMD & Deep
Institution Institution Institution Link for
D A D Resource 6 via
IIIF MD API
Web App – Institution A

3. … that does what users need
Web Application – Institution A
+
_
MS Image 1
Institution D
MS Image 2
Institution B
Image 1
tution D
Book Reader Software - Tool Maker X Deep Zoom Client -- Tool Maker Y
Web App – Institution A

4. … no matter where the content “lives”
Web Application – Institution A
Annotation Tool
Map Image 1 Map Image 2
Institution D Institution E Xcription Tool
Georeferencing
Tool
Map Image 3 Map Image 4 Image Analytics
Institution B Institution D Tools
MultiUp Comparison Viewer - Tool Maker X
Web App – Institution A

5. Medieval Manuscripts:
The Complex Use-Case

6. Medieval Manuscripts:
The Complex Use-Case
CCC 26 f. iiiR Fold A Open Fold A and B Open f. iiiV

7. Medieval Manuscripts:
The Complex Use-Case
Lambeth Palace Maidstone Museum

8. Medieval Manuscripts:
The Complex Use-Case
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but unfortunately,
left blank
Countless manuscripts, all around the world!

9. How do we do it?
1. Separate data from delivery
1. Deliver the data via common API (IIIF)
1. Represent the physical object in a common data model
(SharedCanvas)

10. Separate Data from Delivery
Image Image
Transcription Annotation Discovery Tool X?
Analysis Viewer
Image Viewer Discovery
Metadata (Canonical)
Image Data (Canonical)

11. Deliver via API: IIIF
http://library.stanford.edu/iiif/image-api

12. Data Model: SharedCanvas
http://www.shared-canvas.org

13. CHMTL text + Parker image in T-PEN

14. Examples of other resources attached to
the facsimile
• User-generated
comments (public
and private)
• Audio
performances of
notated music
• Overlaid text
transcription
• Also:
• Data sets
• Mark-up
• Base
image
For working examples, see www.shared-canvas.org choices

15. Resource Interoperability: Viewers
Independently control and compare pages from different parts of a manuscript
… from different manuscripts
… from different repositories

16. What’s next?
• Expose your content
• You don’t have to give it away if you don’t want to or can’t – just
expose it
• Share your requirements:
• User annotations?
• Geo-fun?
• Crowd-sourced cataloging?
• Join the conversation at dmscommons@lists.stanford.edu