Medieval Manuscripts Revealed on the Web
As the Page Turns
The Henry Walters Library Online Project has been moving along. Lately, we've been chewing our way through several meaty projects, including correcting some inconsistancies in our existing metadata and imaging W.658, a beautiful 17th-century book of cartography written by Piri Reis, an Ottoman-Turkish admiral and geographer.
The Piri Reis is a breathtaking manuscript (we'll post pix here soon), full of detailed maps that let the imagination wander to far-off exotic lands. But it is also a looong book, and coupled with the exacting nature of correcting all of our accumulated metadata (and there's a lot of that), we found we needed a little comic relief to get through those long stretches of digital highway. Then, well... one thing sort of led to another.
See, around this time we learned that CBS's Guiding Light soap opera will be ending this fall after 72 years on the air (first as a radio serial starting in 1937, and then on TV starting in 1952). Being in the digital preservation business, we like things that last a long time, so we started to wonder what this project would be like in soap-opera terms. (After all, sometimes it sort of feels like one around here anyway.)
The first step was to create soap-opera code names for everyone. Your faithful digitizers became Destiny Raeburn and Veronica Hart (we believe she may have a secret twin who will be written in later named Victoria). Doug Emery, metadata genius, became Derrick Lean and Mike Toth, planning expert, became Lujack "Scrappy" Spaulding. (Lujack, incidentally, was a real GL character in the '80s who, unfortunately, was killed in a fiery boat explosion, effectively ending his budding career as a rock star. Sorry, Mike.) And our fearless leader, Will Noel, became the debonair Graham Wellington.
So, as a tribute to the show that has entertained at least one of us over the years with stories of intrigue, selective amnesia, and the driving of cars off bridges, we offer you the following burning questions:
Will the metadata EVER be correct?
Will Destiny and Veronica's quest for perfection lead the team into trouble?
Will Derrick and Lujack help the project strike the right balance between productivity and product?
Will Graham Wellington, newly returned from his international travels, find that CHAOS now rules in the Digitization Lab?
Find out ... on the next episode of ...
AS THE PAGE TURNS!
The Piri Reis is a breathtaking manuscript (we'll post pix here soon), full of detailed maps that let the imagination wander to far-off exotic lands. But it is also a looong book, and coupled with the exacting nature of correcting all of our accumulated metadata (and there's a lot of that), we found we needed a little comic relief to get through those long stretches of digital highway. Then, well... one thing sort of led to another.
See, around this time we learned that CBS's Guiding Light soap opera will be ending this fall after 72 years on the air (first as a radio serial starting in 1937, and then on TV starting in 1952). Being in the digital preservation business, we like things that last a long time, so we started to wonder what this project would be like in soap-opera terms. (After all, sometimes it sort of feels like one around here anyway.)
The first step was to create soap-opera code names for everyone. Your faithful digitizers became Destiny Raeburn and Veronica Hart (we believe she may have a secret twin who will be written in later named Victoria). Doug Emery, metadata genius, became Derrick Lean and Mike Toth, planning expert, became Lujack "Scrappy" Spaulding. (Lujack, incidentally, was a real GL character in the '80s who, unfortunately, was killed in a fiery boat explosion, effectively ending his budding career as a rock star. Sorry, Mike.) And our fearless leader, Will Noel, became the debonair Graham Wellington.
So, as a tribute to the show that has entertained at least one of us over the years with stories of intrigue, selective amnesia, and the driving of cars off bridges, we offer you the following burning questions:
Will the metadata EVER be correct?
Will Destiny and Veronica's quest for perfection lead the team into trouble?
Will Derrick and Lujack help the project strike the right balance between productivity and product?
Will Graham Wellington, newly returned from his international travels, find that CHAOS now rules in the Digitization Lab?
Find out ... on the next episode of ...
AS THE PAGE TURNS!
3 Comments
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Comment by B&H CHIMNEYS on May 1, 2009 at 2:30pm - Awesome.
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Comment by Michael Toth on May 1, 2009 at 8:38pm -
Just watch your winnings if you do well on the horses in the Derby this weekend!
Lujack
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Comment by Will Noel on August 16, 2009 at 2:49pm - The Digitization Specialists have been going great guns, and As The Page Turns is delighted to present a few of the results. One of the most spectacular manuscripts at The walters is a masterpiece of Ottoman manuscript making, The Book on Navigation by Piri Reis. Soon the PDF will be available, but some images are already up on FLICKR. I particularly like the Map of Cairo, and especially the Pyramids at Giza, which you can see at the top right of the page in gold. If you would like to see this picture Click Here
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