Sanskrit Manuscripts on the Internet, Cambridge 1996

2019

Art as an applied practice depends much on the material medium of communication. The availability of the medium, on the other hand, means much to the creator, patron, publisher and the audience/spectator/reader. The scarcity and costliness of the material medium determines, to a great extent, the nature and type of art. In the case of written texts, for instance, the primitive materials -stones, animal skins, papyrus etc, also played a great role in making logos sacred. In other words, scientific and technological inventions and innovations in the field of communication influence the production/reproduction of literature almost politically; as such that that they gather around themselves over the ages ideological colours. Now in our time we are witnessing a new medium revolutionizing the production, reproduction and access of arts-namely the digital medium. The digital mode and medium offers certain facilities of communication, dissemination and preservation which other modes and medium cannot. A digitally produced or reproduced literature can be incorporated into a computer programme for automatic response to a user's query from any corner of the earth and at any time provided that, as Borgman says, i.) the user has the basic technical knowledge and skills, ii.) the technology is viable, iii.) the information is relevant and usable (Borgman 2000, 57). Following the principle of automation, digital libraries arose and from the very beginning they depended on the classics for popular and academic acceptance. In this

Stefan Gradmann, 2008

The contribution starts from outlining the evolution of the scholarly production flow from the print based paradigm to the digital age and in this context it explores the opposition of digital versus analog representation modes. It then develops on the triple paradigm shift caused by genuine digital publishing and its specific consequences for the social sciences and humanities (SSH) which in turn results in re-constituting basic scholarly notions such as 'text' and 'document'. The paper concludes with discussing the specific value that could be added in systematically using digital text resources as a basis for scholarly work and also states some of the necessary conditions for such a 'digital turn' to be successful in the SSH.

INTRODUCTION Media Technologies and the Digital Humanities, 2023

Do not to seek the old in the new, but find something new in the old. 1 The digital age has shaped our ways of viewing ourselves, society, and culture. Since 2000, regular use of the internet among Americans has risen from around 50% to over 90%. For people under sixty-five, regular internet usage is nearly universal. For education and industries, access to the internet is no 2 longer a convenience, it is a necessity. It has also reframed and revealed new perspectives on how medievalists engage with historical phenomena in the classroom, during the research process, and in promulgating new findings through presentations, publications, and other research products. Pervasive use of digital tools does not necessarily correlate with effective use of those tools. PowerPoint slides continue to be a common feature in the college lecture hall, only skimming the surface of the enormous diversity of media available in digital spaces for teaching and learning. Presenting medieval studies in this way does not reflect the type of work done by medieval studies in 2022 and presents a false image of the field to students and the general public. In the most basic sense, the digital age has dramatically shifted the accessibility of medieval media and the modality through which people use it. Hours upon hours previously spent in archival reading rooms have been replaced with screen time as major archival locations, such as the Bibliotheque Nationale, British Library, and Vatican Library, have endeavored upon major digitization initiatives-Gallica, Digitised Manuscripts, and DigVatLib, respectively. These efforts have made tens of thousands of manuscripts available to researchers around the world in extremely high-quality images. Similarly, the production of academic papers, books, and volumes is now developed primarily, if not exclusively, through virtual communication over digital space-where would medieval publishing houses be without access to Adobe pdfs? The myriad of societal effects due to the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of digital access, digital

"Literary Studies Becoming Digital" introduces students to the problems –scholarly, ethical, aesthetic, technical, and cultural-- that arise as literary studies moves away from old technologies and artifacts and is replaced or augmented by the digital. Through a focus on transatlantic American literary history, each of the units of this course will study the archive—on and offline—of Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, major figures of literary history and digital culture. During each unit, we will divide our focus between understanding key (pre-digital) literary texts and their digital redaction through a study of digital archives that feature their work. In addition to close readings and scholarly reception of the text in historical context we will also address issues of interface design and online communities by looking at the text-based Internet versus the multi-media Web. In the last unit, using OMECKA , we will develop a multi-media, group authored website building on what we’ve learned about web design for the scholarly world and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the focal figure of this last unit. The class addresses issues of media manipulation, ethical behavior, and identity representation online, we will also be discussing social network use. Class requirements are two oral presentations and one short, animated film , one in each unit on a topic of your choice, Proposal (10 pages), Design Logs, and a Final Report (15-20 pages) due post-project. *NO WEB EXPERIENCE NEEDED*

2003

One of the fundamental ways of improving the quality of higher education is to facilitate and support the processes of creating, accessing, and using information/knowledge. The world of scholarship has changed dramatically in the last decade. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are the catalysts of this change. The ICTs have given us the power to manage information more effectively and also the means to dissolve barriers and offer equity of access to knowledge and information. New technologies are forcing universities and academic institutions to rethink their strategic role concerning scholarship. Web publishing makes it possible for them to alter and strengthen their position in the process of creation and communication of academic research. Therefore universities have to reconsider the ways and practices in scholarly publishing. This means that they not only have to redefine their role in the process of optimization of access to scholarly information, but also have ...

2005

2018

Fabio Cusimano A 'cloud' full of digitized manuscripts. The Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, from the Custos Catalogi to the Data Curator. Keywords (ENG.): Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, digital library, digitization, cooperation, free access, 'cloud', data curation, International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). Abstract (ENG.): Digital libraries and digitization projects have developed from their inception as a temporary phenomenon to become a real opportunity. Today the dissemination of knowledge can make use of new web-based technologies, while also benefiting from the improved quality of digital objects, more mature metadata standards, more capable retrieval technologies, etc. But the roots of libraries are older than the so-called digital revolution, as can be seen from the case of the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. Since the first years of the 17th century, this prestigious conservation library has managed and curated a special and unique collection of precious manuscripts, and, now as then, it makes those masterpieces freely available for users from all over the world, both at its reading room and, today, through its new digital initiative. Many librarians (also known as custodes catalogi) have succeeded each other over the centuries, always pursuing preservation and conservation targets, and always enriching and curating the catalogs. Today we are still inspired by those masters of the past, but we are also engaged in making these precious sources available for an ever-increasing audience thanks to our new freely accessible digital library.

Springer eBooks, 2022

The Humanities in the digital The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently. (Graeber 2013) 1.1 IN THE DIGITAL The digital transformation of society was saluted as the imperative, unstoppable revolution which would have provided unparalleled opportunities to our increasingly globalised societies. Among other benefits, it was praised for being able to accelerate innovation and economic growth, increase flexibility and productivity, reduce waste consumption, simplify and facilitate services and information provision and improve competitiveness by drastically reducing development time and cost (Komarčević et al. 2017). At the same time, however, warnings about the dramatic and disruptive changes and outcomes that it would inevitably carry accompanied the considerable hype. For example, several economists raised serious concerns about the major risks that would derive from the digital transformation of society. A non-negligible number of evidence-based studies projected rise in social inequality, job loss and job insecurity, wage deflation, increased polarisation in society, issues of environmental sustainability, local and global threats to security and privacy, decrease in trust, ethical questions on the use of data by organisations and governments and online profiling, outdated regulations, issues of accountability in relation to algorithmic