Conference coming up! (9th September, Ghent, Belgium)¶
Yep, we will be speaking again! If you are in Ghent, Belgium, on Saturday 9 September, you should come by the following conference:
Digital Dreams¶
(link) Information Technology, Social History Research and the Future of Archives, Museums and Libraries Conference location: De Krook City Library of Ghent Hosted by Amsab-Institute of Social History The conference Digital Dreams is organized by: IALHI-International Association of Labour History Institutions, and Worklab-International Association of Labour Museums, with the support of ITH-International Conference of Labour and Social History, and ELHN-European Labour History Network. Here's what we'll be speaking about and when: 9.45AM – Session 5. Tools - Giulio Menna and Marjolein de Vos (Sexy Codicology, Leiden), Discoverability of Medieval Manuscripts Collections: The Impact of the Digitized Medieval Manuscripts App on Research
"What?"¶
Well, we were wondering about the following: If you digitize a medieval manuscript and place it online, is the manuscript "discoverable"? Can a researcher find it easily? And once a digitized book is placed online, is the work of the housing institution over? Or is there more to be done? While creating the DMMapp we have experienced first hand how difficult it is to find specific digitized manuscripts, or even repositories that house them. We believe that the situation can be improved; every day more and more digitized manuscripts come online, but due to technical reasons (metadata, poor website design, management errors, etc.), some can be difficult to find and might end in the internet limbo, where beautiful things exists, but they are impossible to discover. In our presentation we will explain how the DMMapp and Sexy Codicology are helping researchers by making repositories easier to find, and maybe more interestingly, what institutions can do to help users find their manuscripts (and digitized material in general) both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. We will also share some interesting statistics such as how many people we have sent to view digitized manuscripts via our blog, or which is the most visited library in the DMMapp. A couple of days after the conference we will share our material on our blog, so if you can't make it, you won't miss out! See you there!