Documentation

Using Transkribus
 This website is hosted on Github.

All transcriptions were made with the help of the tool Transkribus. For handwritten material, all text was transcribed manually (see credits). For early-modern prints, the HTR model Noscemus was used, but the result was corrected manually. A fully searchable interface is provided on read&search.

Image viewers are provided by Vikus viewer (on Github). Image tagging was made in ICAT – Image Categorization Utility (on Github). This tool was designed by Mike Bennett exclusively for this purpose and this project. Bibliographic metadata is provided through a Zotero library (to be made publicly available soon).

For a documentation of the Census Database Magnetic Margins please see there.

Integration of many of the visual and textual sources into the SCTA (Scholastic Commentaries and Texts Archive), GATE (Gregorian Archives Texts Editing) and the Wolfenbütteler Digitalen Quellen is in development.

All IIIF services are hosted by the Bibliotheca Hertziana and were structured using two scripts (here and here) by Raffaele Viglianti and Giacomo Marchioro.

A document for the explanation of the vocabulary used for the tagging of image metadata is provided here as PDF and HTML.

See also:

  • Brief demonstration of this website on Vimeo
  • Presentation on ICAT and SCTA within the workshop From Data to Wisdom IIIF Reader: Multilevel Visualization Research on Vimeo
  • IIIF community call on Transkribus on YouTube
  • IIIF conference presentation on SCTA and images on YouTube
Comprehensive historical research related to this project and further bibliography can be found here.

A simplified Map of the Data and the Tools
Ontology
Rara Magnetica comprises three layers. A semantic layer relates to works as carries of ideas, consisting of text and images. A material layer related to the concrete manifestations of works, i.e. the unique copies of printed editions that may carry readers' annotations. The social layer connects the two layers: Persons in different roles and capacities created the conceptual and physical objects that have been mentioned.
The data underlying the three layers is stored in different formats and with different metadata, depending on their nature and established standards.
The user perspective is reflected by the use of different tools and platforms to enter and to visualize and explore the data.