Abstract
Since c. 2008 many special collections libraries have allowed researchers to take photographs of medieval manuscripts: this article calls such self-service photography ‘DIY digitization’. The article considers some possible effects of this digital tool for research on book history, especially on palaeography, comparing it in particular to the effects of institutionally-led digitization. ‘DIY digitization’ does assist with access to manuscripts, but less easily and with less open data than institutional digitization does. Instead, it allows the researcher’s intellectual agenda to guide the selection of what to photograph. The photographic process thereby becomes part of the process of analysis. Photography by the researcher is therefore limited by subjectivity but it also helps to highlight the role of subjective perspectives in scholarship. It can also balance a breadth or depth of perspective in ways different from institutional digitization. It could in theory foster increased textual scholarship but in practice has fostered attention to the materiality of the text.
Works Cited
Albritton, Benjamin, Georgia Henley and Elaine Treharne (eds.). 2020. Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age. London: Routledge.10.4324/9781003003441Search in Google Scholar
Altschuler, Sari and David Weimer. 2020. “Texturing the Digital Humanities: A Manifesto”. PMLA 135: 74–91.10.1632/pmla.2020.135.1.74Search in Google Scholar
Anon. 2015. “Photography in the Manuscripts Reading Room”. On the blog British Library: Medieval Manuscripts. 19 March. <https://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/03/photography-in-the-manuscripts-reading-room.htm> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Baron, Naomi. 2015. Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Beeby, Andrew, Richard Gameson and Catherine Nicholson. 2018. “New Light on Old Illuminations”. Archives and Records 39: 244–256.Search in Google Scholar
Bischoff, Bernhard. 1990. Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Trans. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and David Ganz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511809927Search in Google Scholar
Booth, Alison and Miriam Posner. 2020. “Introduction: The Materials at Hand”. PMLA 135: 9–22.10.1632/pmla.2020.135.1.9Search in Google Scholar
Boyle, Leonard. 1984. Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.10.3138/9781442677173Search in Google Scholar
Braun, Marta and Hope Kingsley (eds.). 2015. Salt and Silver: Early Photography 1840–1860. London: Mack.Search in Google Scholar
Clark, Meredith D. 2020. “Picture this: The Screenshot’s Use in Digital Humanities Scholarship”. PMLA 135: 203–206.10.1632/pmla.2020.135.1.203Search in Google Scholar
Derolez, Albert. 2003. The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Echard, Siân. 2008. Printing the Middle Ages. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.10.9783/9780812201840Search in Google Scholar
Edwards, A. S. G. 2013. “Back to the Real?”. Times Literary Supplement 7 June: 15.Search in Google Scholar
Endres, Bill. 2017. “A Literacy of Building: Making in the Digital Humanities”. In: Jentery Sayer (ed.). Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 44–54.10.5749/j.ctt1pwt6wq.7Search in Google Scholar
Endres, Bill. 2019. Digitizing Medieval Manuscripts: The St. Chad Gospels, Materiality, Recoveries, and Representation in 2D and 3D. Leeds: Arc Humanities Press.10.2307/j.ctvpb3vr0Search in Google Scholar
Gómez Cruz, Edgar and Eric T. Meyer. 2012. “Creation and Control in the Photographic Process: iPhones and the Emerging Fifth Moment of Photography”. Photographies 5: 203–221.10.1080/17540763.2012.702123Search in Google Scholar
Green, Daryl. 2021. “Learning to Let Go: Ownership, Rights, Fees, and Permissions of Readers’ Photographs”. In: Ursula Lenker and Gabriele Rippl (eds.). Book Histories in the Digital Age. Special Issue of Anglia 139: 59–70.10.1515/ang-2021-0004Search in Google Scholar
Green, Johanna M. E. 2018. “Digital Manuscripts as Sites of Touch: Using Social Media for ‘Hands-On’ Engagement with Medieval Manuscript Materiality”. In: Michael Hanrahan and Bridget Whearty (eds.). Digital Medieval Manuscript Cultures. Special Issue of Archive Journal. September 2018. <http://www.archivejournal.net/essays/digital-manuscripts-as-sites-of-touch-using-social-media-for-hands-on-engagement-with-medieval-manuscript-materiality/> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Hamlyn, Sarah. 2015. “What you should Know about Self-Service Photography”. On the blog British Library: Collection Care. 19 January. <https://blogs.bl.uk/collectioncare/2015/01/what-you-should-know-about-self-service-photography.html> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Hanrahan, Michael and Bridget Whearty. 2018. “Introduction”. In: Michael Hanrahan and Bridget Whearty (eds.). Digital Medieval Manuscript Cultures. Special issue of Archive Journal. September 2018. <http://www.archivejournal.net/essays/digital-medieval-manuscript-cultures/> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Hassner, Tal et al. (eds.). 2013. “Report from Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 12382: Computation and Palaeography: Potentials and Limits”. <10.4230/DagRep.2.9.184> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Jones, Melissa L. 2010. “DIY Digitization: Creating a Small-Scale Digital Zine Exhibit”. In: Kwong Bor Ng and Jason Kucsma (eds.). Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small and Medium-Sized Digitization Projects. New York: Metropolitan New York Library Council. 1–22.Search in Google Scholar
Madsen, Christine McCarthy. 2010. “Communities, Innovation, and Critical Mass: Understanding the Impact of Digitization on Scholarship in the Humanities through the Case of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies”. Unpubl. DPhil. thesis, University of Oxford. <https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:928053ea-e8d9-44ff-9c9a-aaae1f6dc695> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Maniaci, Marilena et al. 2011. “Applications actuelles de l’informatique à la paléographie: Quelles méthodes pour quelles finalités?”. Gazette du livre médiéval 56–57: 119–130.Search in Google Scholar
Menna, Giulio. 2012. “Manuscript Photogeny – When Manuscripts Smile to the Camera”. On the blog Medieval Fragments. 13 July. <https://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/manuscript-photogeny-when-manuscripts-smile-to-the-camera/> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Meyer, Eric T. 2007. “Socio-Technical Perspectives on Digital Photography: Scientific Digital Photography Use by Marine Mammal Researchers”. Unpubl. PhD dissertation, Indiana University. <https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/2022/7732/1/umi-indiana-1879.pdf> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Moschovi, Alexandra, Carol McKay and Arabella Plouviez. 2013. “Introduction”. In: Alexandra Moschovi, Carol McKay and Arabella Plouviez (eds.). The Versatile Image: Photography, Digital Technologies and the Internet. Leuven: Leuven University Press. 1–32.Search in Google Scholar
Muellner, Nicholas. 2013. “The New Interval”. In: Alexandra Moschovi, Carol McKay and Arabella Plouviez (eds.). The Versatile Image: Photography, Digital Technologies and the Internet. Leuven: Leuven University Press. 75–82.Search in Google Scholar
Münster, Sander and Melissa Terras. 2019. “The Visual Side of Digital Humanities: A Survey on Topics, Researchers, and Epistemic Cultures”. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 35: 366–389. <https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqz022> [accessed 31 May 2020].10.1093/llc/fqz022Search in Google Scholar
Nelson, Brent and Melissa Terras. 2012. “Introduction”. In: Brent Nelson and Melissa Terras (eds.). Digitizing Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 1–20.Search in Google Scholar
Pierazzo, Elena. 2009. “Digital Genetic Editions: The Encoding of Time in Manuscript Transcription”. In: Marilyn Deegan and Kathryn Sutherland (eds.). Text Editing: Print and the Digital World. Farnham: Ashgate. 169–186.Search in Google Scholar
Prescott, Andrew and Lorna Hughes. 2018. “Why do we Digitize? The Case for Slow Digitization”. In: Michael Hanrahan and Bridget Whearty (eds.). Digital Medieval Manu-script Cultures. Special issue of Archive Journal. September 2018. <http://www.archivejournal.net/essays/why-do-we-digitize-the-case-for-slow-digitization/> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Rubinstein, Daniel. 2020. “The New Paradigm”. In: Daniel Rubinstein (ed.). Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in the Digital Age. New York: Routledge. 1–7.10.4324/9781351027946-1Search in Google Scholar
Schaaf, Larry J. 2017. “Sleuthing in a Library’s Davenport”. On the blog The Talbot Catalogue Raisonné. 10 November. <https://talbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/2017/11/10/sleuthing-in-alibrarys-davenport/> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Schaaf, Larry J. et al. (eds.). 2017. The Talbot Catalogue Raisonné. <http://foxtalbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. 2008. On Photography. London: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar
Spencer, H. Leith. 2015. “F. J. Furnivall’s Six of the Best: The Six-Text Canterbury Tales and the Chaucer Society”. Review of English Studies 66: 601–623.10.1093/res/hgv004Search in Google Scholar
Stanford, Emma. 2016. “DIY Digitization Mini-Conference”. On the blog Bodleian Digital Libraries. 18 January. <https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/digital/tag/diy-digitization/> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
Stokes, Peter A. 2009. “Computer-Aided Palaeography, Present and Future”. In: Malte Rehbein, Patrick Sahle and Torsten Schaßan (eds.). Kodikologie und Paläographie im digitalen Zeitalter – Codicology and Palaeography in the Digital Age. Norderstedt: Books on Demand. 309–338.Search in Google Scholar
Stokes, Peter A. 2011. “Teaching Manuscripts in the Digital Age”. In: Franz Fischer, Christiane Fritze and Georg Vogeler (eds.). Kodikologie und Paläographie im digitalen Zeitalter 2 – Codicology and Palaeography in the Digital Age 2. Norderstedt: Books on Demand. 229–245.Search in Google Scholar
Stokes, Peter. A. 2012. “Palaeography and the ‘Virtual Library’ of Manuscripts”. In: Brent Nelson and Melissa Terras (eds.). Digitizing Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 137–169.Search in Google Scholar
Tanselle, G. Thomas. 2009. Bibliographical Analysis: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511609862Search in Google Scholar
Terras, Melissa. 2010. “Digital Curiosities: Resource Creation via Amateur Digitization”. Literary and Linguistic Computing 25: 425–438.10.1093/llc/fqq019Search in Google Scholar
Terras, Melissa. 2015 a. “Cultural Heritage Information: Artefacts and Digitization Technologies”. In: Ian Ruthven and G. G. Chowdhury (eds.). Cultural Heritage Information: Access Management. London: Facet. 63–88.10.29085/9781783300662.005Search in Google Scholar
Terras, Melissa. 2015 b. “Opening Access to Collections: The Making and Using of Open Digitised Cultural Content”. Online Information Review 39: 733–752.10.1108/OIR-06-2015-0193Search in Google Scholar
Terras, Melissa. 2016. “Crowdsourcing in the Digital Humanities”. In: Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth (eds.). A New Companion to Digital Humanities. Oxford: Wiley. 420–439.10.1002/9781118680605.ch29Search in Google Scholar
Traube, Ludwig. 1909. Zur Paläographie und Handschriftenkunde. Ed. Paul Lehmann. Munich: Beck.Search in Google Scholar
Van Haaren, Suzette. 2020. “Physical Distancing from Manuscripts and the Presence of the Digital Facsimile”. On the blog Cambridge Medieval Graduate Students. 25 May. <https://camedievalists.wordpress.com/2020/05/25/physical-distancing-from-manuscripts-and-the-presence-of-the-digital-facsimile/> [accessed 31 May 2020]Search in Google Scholar
Van Lit, L.W.C. 2020. Among Digitized Manuscripts: Philology, Codicology, Palaeography in a Digital World. Leiden: Brill.10.1163/9789004400351Search in Google Scholar
Wakelin, Daniel. 2014. Scribal Correction and Literary Craft: English Manuscripts, 1375–1510. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139923279Search in Google Scholar
Wakelin, Daniel. 2018. Designing English: Early Literature on the Page. Oxford: Bodleian Library.Search in Google Scholar
Werner, Sarah. 2014. “It’s History, Not a Viral Feed”. On her blog Wynken de Worde. 26 January. <http://sarahwerner.net/blog/2014/01/its-history-not-a-viral-feed/> [accessed 31 May 2020].Search in Google Scholar
White, Tom. 2020. “A Working History of Digital Zoom, Medieval to Modern”. Talk at the Medieval English Research Seminar, University of Oxford, 27 May 2020 [conducted by Microsoft TEAMS]. (Quoted with permission.)Search in Google Scholar
Wiles, Kate. 2015. “Monetising the Past: Medieval Marginalia and Social Media”. On the blog History Today. 10 April. <https://www.historytoday.com/kate-wiles/monetising-pastmedieval-marginalia-and-social-media> [accessed 8 December 2019].Search in Google Scholar
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
