Among Digitized Manuscripts. Philology, Codicology, Paleography in a Digital World

L.W. Cornelis van Lit, O.P., is a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University and a friar of the Order of Preachers. His main expertise lies in medieval Islamic philosophy. He runs the online magazine The Digital Orientalist.

“Among Digitized Manuscripts is well worth a read. The four practical chapters and the digital appendix are a resource that students and scholars wishing to work more effectively with digital manuscripts will return to as a reference.” Kelly Tuttle in Reviews“The combination of theoretic considerations with hands-on tutorials and personal experience from ‘the field’ is the result of van Lit’s previous work in the digital humanities and, at the same time, an attempt to provide fledgling digital scholars with everything they need.” Cornelius Berthold in Der Islam 98/2 (2021)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 Manuscript World, Print World, Digital World1 Three Worlds2 Case Study 1: ABC for Book Collectors versus A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology3 Case Study 2: A World Without Whom versus Do I Make Myself Clear?4 Case Study 3: The Written, Printed, and Digital Koran5 Consequences for Digitized Manuscripts2 The Digital Materiality of Digitized Manuscripts1 Stepping into the Digital World2 Larger Than Life Digitized Manuscripts3 The Intangible Aura of Material Manuscripts4 What Are Digitized Manuscripts?5 New Habits for Philologists in a Digital World3 Digitized Manuscripts and Their Repositories, an Ethnography1 Old Collections in Europe2 New Collections in North America3 Major Collections in the MENA Region4 Notable Collections in Africa, the Levant, and Asia5 A Grand Comparison of the Quality of Digital Surrogates6 A Visual Comparison7 Difference between Professional and Amateur Photos8 The Future of Digital Manuscript Repositories4 Paleography: Between Erudition and Computation1 The Variety of Digital Paleographic Experience2 Rise and Fall of Team Projects Funded by Grants3 Drawing Ancient Symbols on a Tablet5 Philology: Standards for Digital Editing1 File Formats2 Encoding of Text3 Markup of Text4 Intermezzo: Using the Right Editing Tool5 Handling Images6 Archiving and Publishing6 Cataloging: From a Dusty Backroom to the World Wide Web1 Field Research Workflow: From a Dusty Backroom to My Computer2 Web Development: From My Computer to the World Wide Web3 Structure: HTML4 Content: JSON5 Style: CSS6 Interactivity: JavaScript7 Productivity: Code Editor and Code Repository8 Quantitative Analysis of the Collection7 Codicology: Automated Analysis Using Python and OpenCV1 Why Code?2 Description of Case Study3 Introduction to Python4 Introduction to OpenCV5 Step 1: Extraction of Images6 Step 2: Analysis of an Image7 Step 3: Running the Script over Large Numbers8 Results8 A Digital OrientalistPostscript. Among Digitized ManuscriptsBibliographyIndex of PersonsIndex of Subjects