Today at Manuscript, Rare Book & Archive Studies (MARBAS) we're highlighting the source of our little draconic logo, which comes from the codex British Library, Add MS 21160. This is a 13th/14th century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible and it contains multiple examples of micrography: an art form that creates representational or abstract designs from miniature Hebrew letters. This was a distinctive technique created by Hebrew scribes in medieval Christian Europe and the Islamicate world.

Our micrographic dragon appears on folio 19r, alongside Genesis 1:24–25's description of God's creation of the land animals. More examples of micrographic creatures abound through the manuscript -- take a look at its digitized reproduction on the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts webpage ( https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_21160_fs019r ) to see more!

@bookhistodons @medievodons #Manuscripts #HebrewManuscripts #Micrography #Medieval

#introduction

This is the account for Manuscript, Rare Book & Archive Studies (MARBAS) at Princeton. We're an initiative dedicated to sharing resources and techniques related to textual artifacts produced before 1600. That's manuscripts, archival documents, early printed books, papyri, inscriptions, the list goes on! We're all about premodern texts and the multitudes of materials that have carried them.

We'll be posting about #MedievalManuscripts, #BookHistory, and #SpecialCollections from a range of geographies and across #Antiquity, #LateAntiquity, and the #Medieval period.

Looking forward to connecting with @antiquidons, @histodons, @medievodons, @bookhistodons, and others!

https://marbas.princeton.edu/

Some fascinating explorations of sound, script, and place in medieval China in this new issue of the CDH's Startwords -- all combined with experimental and computational research approaches! https://cdh.princeton.edu/updates/2023/10/02/announcing-startwords-issue-4/

It was a privilege this morning to welcome Dr. Evelien Hauwaerts (manuscripts curator, at Bruges Public Library) to give an online workshop on 'Working with IIIF in Research and Public Outreach'. I learned so much today and the workshop materials are available https://www.mmmonk.be/en/about-iiif/workshops #IIIF #OpenResearch #SpecialCollections #Manuscripts

There’s been some great developments with #OCR and #HTR tools eScriptorium and Kraken in recent years -- great to see an updated guide to using Kraken on the Digital Orientalist today! https://digitalorientalist.com/2023/09/26/train-your-own-ocr-htr-models-with-kraken-part-1/

This book does not exist (anymore). But, thanks to libary digitisation, IIIF and @rd_palmer you can sort of view it as if it does https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-teutonic-knights-bible#?c=&m=&s=&cv=143&xywh=-3424%2C-1%2C13375%2C9215

#IIIF #MuseTech

@dr_pda @epyllia @toroe It may not be precisely what you’re envisioning, but for comparison: several projects in classics (including the Perseus digital library) have used the CTS protocol for defining and retrieving passages of texts https://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Canonical_Text_Services. Your sample IIIF-style URL has a similar structure to CTS URNs!

What are available tools for Automated Text recognition? Ariane lists:
-eScriptorium + kraken (free, Open Source)
-OCR-4ll (free, Open Source)
Transkribus (mixed)
Teklia (commercial)
Calfa Vision (commercial) #ATRWorkshop
Where to find ground truth and models?
- HTR-United
- Transkribus catalogue
- Zenodo OCR/HTR community

#introduction I'm a historian and digital humanist interested in the history of science, manuscript studies, and transmissions of knowledge around the ancient and medieval Mediterranean.

Currently working with Princeton's Center for Digital Humanities (cdh.princeton.edu/) and Manuscript, Rare Book & Archive Studies (marbas.princeton.edu/).