{"id":13439,"date":"2013-05-02T16:21:41","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T16:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/?p=13439"},"modified":"2014-02-11T20:11:46","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T20:11:46","slug":"free-and-easy-the-appearance-of-truly-useful-cultural-heritage-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/librarynews\/2013\/05\/02\/free-and-easy-the-appearance-of-truly-useful-cultural-heritage-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Free and Easy: The Appearance of Truly Useful Cultural Heritage Data"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"William

William Noel at the Center for Humanities at Temple<\/p><\/div>\n

“My mission is to bring art and people together, for learning, discovery, and enjoyment.” –William Noel<\/em><\/p>\n

On Thursday, April 25th, the Center for Humanities at Temple<\/a> hosted William Noel, \u00a0internationally renowned expert in the application of digital technologies to manuscript studies. \u00a0\u00a0Dr. Noel is currently director of the\u00a0Special Collections Center<\/a>, and Founding Director of the\u00a0Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Pennsylvania. \u00a0His presentation,\u00a0\u00a0“Free and Easy: The Appearance of Truly Useful Cultural Heritage Data”, covered the restoration and digitization of\u00a0the Archimedes Palimpsest<\/a>, a\u00a0project that he led while at the Walters Art Museum<\/a> in Baltimore. \u00a0Dr. Noel\u00a0concluded with a discussion of the reasons why a “free and easy” approach is best for digitization of cultural materials. \u00a0(Eureka!)<\/p>\n

What is the Archimedes Palimpsest?<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Upon initial examination, what is now known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, appears to be a medieval prayer book, dating from 1229, written by the scribe Johannes Myronas in Jerusalem. Back then, parchment was expensive, and therefore was sometimes “recycled.” \u00a0To make this prayer book, the scribe scraped off old mathematical text from some parchment \u00a0and wrote new text on top, making the book a palimpsest<\/a>. \u00a0From then until 1906, this prayer book was used in liturgical services, and suffered numerous abuses, most notably dripping candle wax, mold, missing pages, and images painted over text as late as the 1930s. \u00a0In 1906 the Danish philologist Johan Heiberg discovered the manuscript in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Istanbul, and identified the hidden text as Archimedes. \u00a0He photographed every page, and with the help of only a magnifying glass, transcribed and published the underlying text that he could perceive.<\/p>\n

The twentieth century was no kinder to manuscripts than the middle ages, and from about 1930 to 1991, the Archimedes Palimpsest was either lost or gone from public view until 1998, when an anonymous collector bought the manuscript at an auction at Christie’s in New York. \u00a0This collector brought it to William Noel at the Walters Museum in Baltimore for preservation and digitization, for the world to study and enjoy.<\/p>\n

Why is the Archimedes Palimpsest important?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Bust<\/p>\n

Archimedes (c.287BC-212BC), brilliant scientist, inventor, mathematician, and engineer of ancient Greece, worked extensively in geometry, calculating the value of pi, the circle, the sphere, and cylinder. \u00a0He developed a theory of buoyancy called the Archimedes Principle<\/a>. \u00a0 Of the nine known treatises by Archimedes in Greek, hidden within the Archimedes Palimpsest are seven. \u00a0Of these seven, The Stomachion<\/em> <\/a>and The Method<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>are the only known copies in the world. \u00a0Archimedes’ treatise On Floating Bodies<\/em> contained here is the unique source in the original Greek. \u00a0These Archimedes texts predate any other surviving Archimedes manuscripts by 400 years.<\/p>\n

“Best of all is to win. \u00a0But if you cannot win, then fight for a noble cause…” – Hyperides<\/em><\/p>\n

Extensive sections of previously lost speeches by the 4th century Greek orator Hyperides<\/a>, the largest discovery of new Hyperides text in over a century, also reside hidden in the Archimedes Palimpsest. \u00a0Hyperides spoke at public meetings on topics of Athenian court cases as well as politics and democracy. \u00a0Previous texts of Hyperides are gleaned only from fragments of papyri.<\/p>\n

Other texts hidden beneath the prayerbook are a Commentary on Aristotles Catergories, two Byzantine liturgical manuscripts, and two unidentified manuscripts.<\/p>\n

Restoration<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"CrossConservation and restoration of the Archimedes Palimpsest is an enormous and ongoing task. \u00a0Progress is slow and the work is meticulous and painstaking. \u00a0To prepare the manuscript for imaging, the codex had to be taken apart because the hidden text continued under the folds of the parchment in the spine of the book. \u00a0Because some of the glue was from the late 20th century, it was particularly difficult to remove. \u00a0It\u00a0took 4 years just to take off the glue! \u00a0 Next, the parchment was analyzed chemically to determine the condition of the collagen, the main component of parchment. \u00a0Here you see an image of an enlargement of a cross-section sample of the parchment, the size of a pinhead, from \u00a0the Archimedes Palimpsest. \u00a0The Archimedes text is the dark stain at the top of the parchment. \u00a0In this sample, the collagen is sound. \u00a0But where the manuscript has mold, the collagen is breaking down and disintegrating.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Imaging and Digitization<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Archimedes<\/p>\n

Modern technology allows us to view the underlying text of the Archimedes Palimpsest through various techniques. \u00a0One technique is multi-spectral imaging. \u00a0In ultraviolet light, both the overlying and underlying texts are visible. \u00a0Ink blocks ultraviolet light, but the parchment flouresces, causing another light source. \u00a0There is then, two light sources, one going into the page, and one coming from the page going out, which allows us to see the underlying text. \u00a0When the images are merged together, the underlying text becomes red, and enlarging the image allows the underlying text to be legible. The only way to access the text underneath the gold-leaf illustrations added to the codex in the twentieth century, was to use the particle accelerator at Stanford University. \u00a0Ink used for the Archimedes manuscript contained a high amount of iron, which could be recognized and captured only by the strongest xrays such as those generated by the particle accelerator.\u00a0In the following image, an abstraction of an object or a boat in the sea, one can see that Archimedes considered the world to be round.<\/p>\n

\"X-ray<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Principles of Digitizating Cultural Artifacts<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

William Noel explained the basic principles that formed the foundation for the many decisions made during the Archimedes Palimpsest project. \u00a0 His principles are based on ethical considerations, digital use and sustainability, and economic value for the institution undertaking the project. \u00a0Taking the example of the Mona Lisa, Noel explained that thousands of people visit the Louvre every year to see the Mona Lisa, even though they already know what the painting looks like. \u00a0In fact, the reason that the Mona Lisa has so many visitors is precisely because so many know the painting already and want to see the original. \u00a0Therefore, making digital images as broadly available and usable as possible to the largest audience benefits the institution in name recognition, visitors, and financially. \u00a0The Walters Museum in Baltimore has already benefited this way because many of their medieval manuscripts are so freely available, and that they appear at the head of results in Google image searches. \u00a0Thus, the Walters Museum gains name recognition, prestige, and popularity.<\/p>\n

The sustainability of the data benefits from Noel’s philosophy of wide availability and use. As he explains, data from digitized cultural documents must be:<\/p>\n

1. well documented
\n2. \u00a0free
\n3. \u00a0just take it
\n4. \u00a0just use it<\/p>\n

The data from the Archimedes Palimpsest is licensed in the Creative Commons, and images also appear on Flickr. \u00a0As a result, the data from the Archimedes Project is preserved, not only at the Walters Museum, but at Stanford, and at other universities as well.<\/p>\n

Noel also explained the importance of presenting such data as data, pure and simple, allowing others to create interfaces for study and exhibition. \u00a0Why? \u00a0Because interfaces have a shelf-life of only about three years, but the pure data can be used and re-used. \u00a0Noel said that too often institutions are busy creating “boutiquey” interfaces for their digitized data, that these institutions are presenting “apple pie” to the researchers, when simply presenting the raw data in many cases would be more helpful. \u00a0In addition, Noel gave an amusing way to think about data. \u00a0Dr. Noel says that data should be:<\/p>\n

Sustainable
\nUsable
\nComplete
\nKnown<\/p>\n

The criteria for data to be sustainable is that it should be\u00a0cheap to maintain, in an\u00a0interface that should last, and be\u00a0simple, not relational. \u00a0By complete, Dr. Noel explained that images must be presented at full resolution (with derivatives as an option), with all descriptive metadata and all technical metadata. \u00a0And to make the data known, a discovery layer for human readers should be developed. \u00a0Raw xml can be presented that is machine readable, with a style sheet that combines images with the xml, to give a traditional type of presentation.<\/p>\n

Dr. Noel ended the presentation discussing new ways for social media to further scholarship and knowledge. \u00a0For example, jokes are often hidden within medieval manuscripts. \u00a0If a scholar finds a joke in a manuscript, they tweet it! \u00a0The Penn Provenance Project uses social media to help identify the provenance, or historic background of the ownership of precious books and manuscripts by crowdsourcing. \u00a0Scholars writing blogs about the images are important, too. \u00a0Another project, t-pen.org<\/a>, will, in the next few years, make manuscripts texts searchable.<\/p>\n

Using these techniques, we can all share in William Noel’s mission, “to\u00a0bring art and people together for learning, discovery, and enjoyment.”\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\"William<\/a>

William Noel answering questions at the Center for Humanities at Temple.<\/p><\/div>\n

For more information see:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Archimedes Palimpsest<\/a>; 2004; 2 May 2013 <http:\/\/archimedespalimpsest.org\/about\/<\/a>><\/p>\n

Archimedes Palimpsest. \u00a02 May 2013 <http:\/\/www.digitalpalimpsest.org\/<\/a>><\/p>\n

Archimedes.\u00a0\u00a0Works<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0New York; Dover, 195-?.<\/p>\n

Noel, William. Revealing the Lost Codex of Archimedes<\/em>; TED: Ideas Worth Spreading; Apr 2012; 2 May 2013 <http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/william_noel_revealing_the_lost_codex_of_archimedes.html<\/a>><\/p>\n

“Archimedes.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. \u00a0Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. \u00a0Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 2013. \u00a0Web. 02 May 2013.\u00a0<http:\/\/www.britannica.com\/EBchecked\/topic\/32808\/Archimedes<\/a>>.<\/p>\n

Krock, Lexi. \u00a0Inside the Archimedes Palimpsest; NOVA; 09.30.03; 2 May 2013 <http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/nova\/physics\/inside-archimedes-palimpsest.html<\/a>><\/p>\n

Netz, Reviel and William Noel.\u00a0\u00a0The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity’s Greatest Scientist.<\/a><\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Philadelphia; Da Capo, 2007.<\/p>\n

\u00a0-Anne Harlow, May 2 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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