PMI Workshop Report
By PMI on December 12, 2016
Over the course of our 2-day workshop held at the University of Maryland, the Persian Manuscript Initiative—in Collaboration with the The Roshan Initiative in Persian Digital Humanities of the University of Maryland, College Park and the Perseids Project—hosted 24 scholars representing various institutions and technological backgrounds. Participants from universities such as Tufts, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins joined scholars from institutions such as the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian.
Following the opening round table discussion led by Matthew Thomas Miller, a keynote address was delivered by Bridget Almas entitled “Perspectives on Ancient Texts, Data & Digital Infrastructure.” Following the presentation, Almas fielded questions about the curation of digital materials and how to foster collaboration between developers and content handlers. See the full presentation here.
“DATA AGES LIKE WINE AND SOFTWARE AGES LIKE FISH”
Small working groups explored digital platforms such as Omeka, Scriptorium, and Getty Scholar Workplace. After experimenting with each platform, the working groups came together to share their findings, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each digital tool, and report on how each tool could be best used in respect to manuscript digitization.
The workshop also included a virtual meeting and Q&A with Daniel Gullo, William Straub, and Chad LaVigne on the new vHMML digital manuscript workspace. Workshop participants were given the opportunity to ask about the future of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library and the technology involved in their manuscript digitization process.