On automating editions:The affordances of Handwritten Text Recognition platforms for scholarly editing

Recent developments in Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) mean that automated editions – presentational editions generated from both digital images of text, and their corresponding transcriptions created by artificial intelligence – are now available to adopt, adapt, and critique. This paper responds to an absence within scholarly editing literature regarding HTR. HTR is a machine-learning approach that creates accurate transcriptions of images of handwritten documents. We highlight developments in text recognition technology, demonstrating that automated standardised editions are no longer a future possibility, but a reality necessary of consideration within a scholarly editing framework.We do this via a case study of creating a standardised online edition in the HTR platform Transkribus of the manuscripts of Marjorie Fleming (1803-1811), a Scottish child author who became posthumously famous for her free-thinking and precocious diaries. As well as providing a cost-effective way to generate machine-processable transcripts at scale, Transkribus can now generate digital online editions via its ‘read&amp;search’ platform. This provides an efficient mechanism to share and search digitised texts, bypassing previous procedures and disrupting established processes for data formatting, hosting, and delivery of online editions. However, we show that while read&amp;search can be considered a scholarly digital edition, it needs further development to be encountered as a critical digital edition, providing suggestions for ongoing development. Automating the process of creating scholarly digital editions will encourage others to create them, democratising the digital edition landscape, although we reflect on the ramifications this may have. <br/

The Electronic Scriptorium: Markup for New Testament Manuscripts

The creation of scholarly editions has been transformed by the adoption of digital tools, affecting every stage of the process from approaching primary sources to final publication. One of the most significant is the way in which electronic media overcome some of the constraints of printed texts and permit a fuller and more flexible presentation of the data, as well as facilitating subsequent alteration and future re-use. This is exemplified by the full-text manuscript transcriptions produced by the International Greek New Testament Project and the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in their work towards the first scientific edition of the New Testament, the Editio Critica Maior. The present study offers an overview of the process of transcribing biblical manuscripts and outlines the encoding in Extensible Markup Language (XML) developed as part of the Workspace for Collaborative Editing, a joint Anglo-German project to create a suite of digital tools for the production of the Editio Critica Maior and, in time, for other textual traditions

All texts are equal, but... Textual Plurality and the Critical Text in Digital Scholarly Editions

Is there a future for the “old philology”? Why are “truly critical” and “truly digital” editions so rare? This article discusses the questions raised at the Leuven round table by showcasing two scholarly editions that claim to be both digital and critical: the edition of William of Auxerre’s Summa de officiis ecclesiasticis, an early thirteenth century Latin treatise on liturgy, and the so-called HyperStack edition of Saint Patrick’s Confessio, a fifth-century open letter by Ireland’s patron saint, also written in Latin and the oldest text that has survived from Ireland in any language. In giving a comparative introduction to both of these online editions — to their underlying methodology and theoretical implications — I will make the following arguments: (1) Critical texts matter. The critical reconstruction of an assumed original text version as intended by an author remains of major interest for most textual scholars and historians as well as any person with an interest in historical texts. (2) Critical texts have the same legitimacy as various and different manifestations of a text. Digital editions enable the presentation of textual plurality. (3) There is no reason intrinsic to the digital medium that makes the idea of a critical text obsolete. Rather, a critical text can serve as the standard reference, as an ideal text to start with and as a portal to access the variety of textual manifestations of a particular work

Extending the DSE: LOD support and TEI/IIIF integration in EVT

Current digital scholarly editions (DSEs) have the opportunity of evolving to dynamic objects interacting with other Internet-based resources thanks to open frameworks such as IIIF and LOD. This paper showcases and discusses two new functionalities of EVT (Edition Visualization Technology), version 2: one improving the management of named entities (f.i. personal names) through the use of LOD resources such as FOAF and DBpedia; the other, providing integration of the published text with digital images of the textual primary sources accessed from online repositories (e.g. e-codices or digital libraries such as the Vaticana or the Ambrosiana) via the IIIF protocol

Data fluidity in DARIAH -- pushing the agenda forward

This paper provides both an update concerning the setting up of the European DARIAH infrastructure and a series of strong action lines related to the development of a data centred strategy for the humanities in the coming years. In particular we tackle various aspect of data management: data hosting, the setting up of a DARIAH seal of approval, the establishment of a charter between cultural heritage institutions and scholars and finally a specific view on certification mechanisms for data

Competition and cooperation: Libraries and publishers in the transition to electronic scholarly journals

The conversion of scholarly journals to digital format is proceeding rapidly, especially for those from large commercial and learned society publishers. This conversion offers the best hope for survival for such publishers. The infamous "journal crisis" is more of a library cost crisis than a publisher pricing problem, with internal library costs much higher than the amount spent on purchasing books and journals. Therefore publishers may be able to retain or even increase their revenues and profits, while at the same time providing a superior service. To do this, they will have to take over many of the function of libraries, and they can do that only in the digital domain. This paper examines publishers' strategies, how they are likely to evolve, and how they will affect libraries

Putting the Text back into Context: A Codicological Approach to Manuscript Transcription

Textual scholars have tended to produce editions which present the text without its manuscript context. Even though digital editions now often present single-witness editions with facsimiles of the manuscripts, nevertheless the text itself is still transcribed and represented as a linguistic object rather than a physical one. Indeed, this is explicitly stated as the theoretical basis for the de facto standard of markup for digital texts: the Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). These explicitly treat texts as semantic units such as paragraphs, sentences, verses and so on, rather than physical elements such as pages, openings, or surfaces, and some scholars have argued that this is the only viable model for representing texts. In contrast, this chapter presents arguments for considering the document as a physical object in the markup of texts. The theoretical arguments of what constitutes a text are first reviewed, with emphasis on those used by the TEI and other theoreticians of digital markup. A series of cases is then given in which a document-centric approach may be desirable, with both modern and medieval examples. Finally a step forward in this direction is raised, namely the results of the Genetic Edition Working Group in the Manuscript Special Interest Group of the TEI: this includes a proposed standard for documentary markup, whereby aspects of codicology and mise en page can be included in digital editions, putting the text back into its manuscript context