Paper: DIGITALIZATION OF ARCHIVAL CULTURAL HERITAGE AND PREPARATION FOR EXPORT TO THE INTERNET

1
PaperDIGITALIZATION OF ARCHIVAL CULTURAL
HERITAGEAND PREPARATION FOR EXPORT TO THE
INTERNET

• Authors
• Sneana Pejovic
• dr Sanja Bauk
• SEEDI, Cetinje, September 13th 15th 2007

2
DIGITALIZATION OF ARCHIVAL CULTURAL HERITAGEAND
PREPARATION FOR EXPORT TO THE INTERNET

• Archival and library material of church
  provenience (both Orthodox and Catholic),
  preserved at Kotor, are placed in several church
  archival and library depositories (conditionally
  named church archives and libraries)
• First projects of digitalization of the church
  material in Montenegro, i.e. at Kotor, were
  launched by NGO Notar - Kotor
• CD-ROM Archives, Libraries and Cultural and
  Historical Monuments of Kotor, which is left in
  its working version, because of uninteresting of
  subjects.
• Digitalization of Manuscripts and Early Printed
  Fragments from the Library of the Franciscan
  Monastery of St. Clara in Kotor, the project is
  currently in the realization phase.

3
DIGITALIZATION OF ARCHIVAL CULTURAL HERITAGEAND
PREPARATION FOR EXPORT TO THE INTERNET

• CD-ROM Archives, Libraries and Cultural and
  Historical Monuments of Kotor
• The cover of CD-ROM

4
DIGITALIZATION OF ARCHIVAL CULTURAL HERITAGEAND
PREPARATION FOR EXPORT TO THE INTERNET

• CD-ROM Archives, Libraries and Cultural and
  Historical Monuments of Kotor
• The contest of the CD-ROM

5
Digitalization of Manuscripts from the Library of
Franciscan Monastery

• The project comprises expert processing
  including application of modern technology of a
  collection of documents (fragments from
  liturgical books, manuscript or early printed
  material, as well as, other documents of both
  sacral and profane origin).
• Description of the archival collection
• Amount 167 document, some of which consist
  several fragments of liturgical books or several
  pages of individual documents (papal bulls,
  charters, notary documents, Turkish firmans,
  literary texts and similar). There all together
  351 items
• period from 11th to 18th century
• language Latin, Italian, Turkish (Ottoman),
  German, Greek as well as our own language)
• letter medieval scripts (Beneventan, Caroline,
  Caroline-Gothic, Cursive Gothic, Book Gothic,
  Humanistic and Baroque handwriting, Arabian
  script, Germany Gothic. There are early printed
  fragments too.

6
Digitalization of Manuscripts from the Library of
Franciscan Monastery

• The goals of the project
• Presentation of the archival collection to
  scientific and cultural public by
  identification, arrangement, processing and
  protection of archival material
• limitation of using of the originals in order to
  reduce further physical damage
• preservation of the collection integrity, i.e.
  prevention potential alienation or migration of
  documents
• creation of Internet presentation in order to
  make the collection accessible to a wide circle
  of researchers both at home and abroad

7
Digitalization of Manuscripts from the Library of
Franciscan Monastery

• attempt to provide financial support for
  permanent physical, chemical and biologic
  protection of the collection
• to point out value of church possess and heritage
  as well as the importance of their opening in a
  professional manner making use of the latest
  technologies in the service of science and
  profession
• popularization of rich Montenegro cultural past.

8
Digitalization of Manuscripts from the Library of
Franciscan Monastery

• Description of project
• The project is interdisciplinary in its
  structure, demanding coordination between
  paleographers, archivists, experts in other
  auxiliary historical sciences, librarians,
  bibliographers, historians, literature and art
  historians, philologists, musicologists, experts
  in computer technologies, theologians, priests
  and other individuals well versed in religion.
• According to the plan, the project has seven
  phases and its realization should take 15 months.
  Digitalization and processing of the most
  important documents are in progress.
• The project leader is NGO Notar Kotor. The
  project is funded by the Montenegrin Parliament
  Committee for Allocation of funds to NGOs.

9
Procedure of Digitalization and Storage of
Digitalized Documents

• Until the end of 2006, digitalization was
  completed for documents with inventory numbers
  from 0 to 96, as well as those with inventory
  numbers 99, 104, 114, 115 and 122.
• This was done using HP Scan Jet 6300C with the
  resolution of 400 dpi.
• Images are stored in a very low degree of JPEG
  compression to preserve as much information as
  possible about the appearance of the original
  documents.
• Every document is scanned separately, front side
  and back side.
• The fragments with dimensions larger than the
  scanner screen, scan in segments. Several
  extremely large formats (inventory numbers
  137139, 154) were digitalized using the Canon
  EOS 350D camera.
• Within the folder where the fragment is placed,
  the name of its file contains the number of the
  fragment and the number of the scanned image of
  the fragment.

10
Digitalization of archival material and
preparation for export to the Internet

• The Internet presentation has been conceived as
  containing two entities
• About 20 historically and culturally most
  important documents will be presented by picture
  and description (date and place of creation of
  document, type of script, brief, type of
  material, dimension, ornaments, damage et al.)
  with a link between the image of the document and
  its description
• The second part of the presentation would be
  constructed as a database. Due to the size limit
  imposed by an Internet presentation, only part of
  the database would be presented on the Internet,
  as is usually done with presentations of this
  type.

11
The Suggestion of Software for the Presentation
and Protection of the Archival material

• The appropriate choice of software, data format
  and preservation standards are necessary.
• A suggestion
• MS ACCESS, since it contains very advanced
  support for developing applications on the
  clients side
• In addition, recent versions of ACCESS include
  various ways of direct posting information from
  ACCESS to Web, as
• Static HTML Web pages
• Dynamic Web pages (through ASP, e.g), and
• Direct approach to the database via Internet,
  which implies possibility of database updating
  via the Net.
• ACCESS supports a variety of textual and
  graphical data formats
• ACCESS integrates extensions for supporting XML
  (eXtensible Markup Language) standard for posting
  data to Internet by means of XSL (eXtensible
  Style Language).

12
The Suggestion of Software for the Presentation
and Protection of the Archival material

• To summarize
• Microsoft standard, i.e. ACCESS application
  software, as relational databases management
  system, under some desktop oriented operative
  systems, by employing some of ACCESS extensions
  like HTML, ASP and/or XML.

13
Digitalization of Manuscripts from the Library of
Franciscan Monastery

• Examples of digitalized documents

The fragment of codex from the end of 13th
century, created in Assisi
14
Digitalization of Manuscripts from the Library of
Franciscan Monastery

• Examples of digitalized documents

Breviary, probably created in 13th or 14th
century in Italy, for the needs of Franciscans at
Kotor
15
Digitalization of Manuscripts from the Library of
Franciscan Monastery

• Examples of digitalized documents

The fragment of papal bulla
16
Digitalization of Manuscripts from the Library of
Franciscan Monastery

• Examples of digitalized documents

The fragments of a liturgical book
17
DIGITALIZATION OF ARCHIVAL CULTURAL HERITAGEAND
PREPARATION FOR EXPORT TO THE INTERNET

• Ideas suggestions
• www.cdknotar.cg.yu

18
DIGITALIZATION OF ARCHIVAL CULTURAL HERITAGEAND
PREPARATION FOR EXPORT TO THE INTERNET

• Thanks for your attention!