King's College London
King's College London
A collaboration between the National Archives in the UK,
the History and Centre for Computing in the Humanities
departments at King’s College London, the Henry III Fine Rolls
project (http://www.frh3.org.uk) has produced both a digital
and a print edition (the latter in collaboration with publisher
Boydell & Brewer) [1] of the primary sources known as the
Fine Rolls. This dual undertaking has raised questions about
the different presentational formats of the two resources and
presented challenges for the historians and digital humanities
researchers involved in the project, and, to a certain extent,
for the publisher too.
This paper will examine how the two resources evolved: the
areas in which common presentational choices served both
media, and areas in which different presentational choices and
production methodologies were necessary. In so doing, this
paper aims to build a solid foundation for further research into
the reading practices and integrated usage of hybrid scholarly
editions like the Henry III Fine Rolls.
Presentation as interpretation
In Material Culture studies and, in particular, in studies of the
book, the presentational format of text is considered to be of
fundamental importance for the study of production, social
reading and use. Therefore, description of and speculation
about the physical organisation of the text is essential of
understanding the meaning of the artefact that bears that text.
Similarly, in Human Computer Interaction studies and in the
Digital Humanities, the presentation of a text is considered
to be an integral outgrowth of the data modelling process;
a representation of the text but also to some degree an
actualisation of the interpretative statements about the text.
Indeed, to the eyes of the reader, the presentational features of
both a printed book and a digital written object will not only
reveal the assumptions and beliefs of its creators, but affect
future analysis of the work.
Dual publication: digital and print
On the practical side, within the Henry III Fine Rolls project,
different solutions of formatting for the two media have been
negotiated and implemented. The print edition mainly represents a careful pruning of the
digital material, especially as pertains to the complex structure
of the indexes.
The indexes were built upon the marked-up fi ne rolls texts
and generated from an ontological framework (Ciula, Spence,
Vieira, & Poupeau; 2007). The latter, developed through
careful analysis by scholars and digital humanities researchers,
constitutes a sort of an a posteriori system that represents
familial networks, professional relationships, geo-political
structures, thematic clusters of subjects, and in general various
types of associations between the 13th century documents
(the so called Fine Rolls) and the the roles played by places
and people in connection with them.
The ontology is used to produce a series of pre-coordinate
axes (the indices) that the reader can follow to explore the
texts. The fl exibility of the ontology allows the texts to be fairly
exhaustively indexed, just as the presentational capabilities
of the digital medium allow for the display and navigation of
indexes that are correspondingly large.
By contrast, the print edition had to follow the refi ned
conventions of a well established scholarly tradition in
publishing editions in general and calendar [2] editions in
particular, both in terms of formatting and, more importantly
for us, in terms of content selection/creation and modelling.
Though the indices within the printed edition are also precoordinate
axes along which to explore the text, the way in
which they are produced is perceived to be a nuanced and
intuitive aspect of the scholarship and one that revealed
itself to be less tolerant to change.This, coupled with the
presentational constraints of the printed medium result in
indices that present information succinctly and with a minimum
of conceptual repetition. Similarly, the fi rst print volume of
around 560 pages gives absolute prominence -something that
can be stated much more strongly in a linear publication than
in a digital one- to a long and detailed historical introduction,
followed by a section on the adopted editorial strategies.
However, the two artefacts of the project also share many
points in common, either because the digital medium had to
mirror the tradition of its more authoritative predecessor, or
for more practical -nevertheless not to be dismissed- reasons
of work-fl ow and foreseen usage. An interesting example
of the latter is the adopted layout of footnotes, where the
print format was modelled on the base of the digital layout
and, although it was a completely unusual arrangement, was
accepted as suitable by the publisher.
On the base of the work done so far and on the feedback on
the use of the book and the website, the presentational format
will be refi ned further for future print volumes to come and
for the additional material to be included in the digital edition
before the end of the project.
One reading process
On the methodological side, we believe that further research
into the usage and reading process of these parallel publications
could lead towards a better understanding of scholarly needs
and therefore a better modelling of such a dual product that
is becoming a more and more common deliverable in digital
humanities projects.
As this paper will exemplify, the presentation of data needs
to be tailored to take into account the more or less fi ne
conventions of two different media which have different
traditions, different life cycles, different patterns of use and,
possibly, different users.
However, although very different in nature, these two
publications are not necessarily perceived and – more
importantly- used as separate resources with rigid boundaries
between them. For a scholar interested in the fi ne rolls, the
reading of the edition and the seeking of information related
to it (persons, places, subjects and any other interesting clue to
its historical study in a broader sense) is a global process that
does not stop when the book is closed or the the browser
shut. We believe that, when supported by a deep interest in
the material, the connection between the two publications is
created in a rather fl uid manner.
The reality of the reading process and information seeking,
as it happens, is infl uenced by the products it investigates,
but ultimately has a form of its own that is different from the
objects of analysis. It is dynamic and heterogeneous, it leaves on
the integration between different types of evidence, no matter
what their format is, including other kind of external sources.
Indeed, the library or archive is the most likely environment
where a scholar of the fi ne rolls would fi nd herself browsing
the print or digital edition, eventually the original primary
sources or their digital images, plus any range of secondary
sources.
Studying the integration of print and
digital
The data behind the two publications are drawn from the
same informational substrate, but are separated to create two
presentational artefacts. As established, reading is expected to
be the primary activity performed using both and a stated
design goal for the project is that the two artefacts will form
a rich body of materials with which to conduct historical
research.The heterogeneity of the materials, however, suggests
that working with texts will of necessity also involve periods
of information seeking: moments while reading that give rise
to questions which the material at hand cannot answer and
the subsequent process embarked upon in order to answer
them. Our working hypothesis is that to fi ll these information
gaps (Wilson, 1999), the reader will turn to particular texts in
the alternative medium to fi nd answers, moving between the
website and the books, fl uctuating between states of reading
and seeking. Thus, the analytical stream in this paper will move from the
practices of creating two types of resources to establishing
an analytical framework for evaluating their use. Situating the
project materials and domain experts within the literature of
information behaviour research, we will identify and develop a
model for evaluating how well the features of the website and
the book support information seeking activities that bridge
(Wilson, 1999) reading within the individual media.
Conclusions
Based on our experience in creating a hybrid edition for the
Henry III Fine Rolls project, the challenges and adopted solutions
for the two types of published resources are a starting point
from which to refl ect on the integrated production of a dual
object. At the same time, continuing work begun elsewhere
in the digital humanities (Buchanan, Cunningham, Blandford,
Rimmer, & Warwick; 2006) to adapt methodologies used in
Information Science and Book Studies, a rationale and method
for the design of an analysis of their use and, in particular, of
the interaction between scholars and the website/books can
be outlined.
Notes
[1] The fi rst volume was published in September 2007 (Dryburgh et
al. 2007).
[2] Calendar stays here for an an English summary of the Latin
records.
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