London Seminar in Digital Text and Scholarship

The next meeting of the London Seminar in Digital Text and Scholarship will be on Thursday 21 February 2008, at 17:30 – 19:00 in room ST275 (Stewart House), as follows:

Speakers: Andrew Prescott ‘Digital Manuscripts: Retrospect and Prospects’ Abstract: It is only thirteen years since the first digital images of medieval manuscripts were made available over the internet, frequently with great fanfares of publicity. Today, digital images of hundreds of medieval manuscripts are freely available. Yet these images seem only to be used in a limited fashion and the availability of these images seem to have had few research results. This paper will review the various ways in which images have been made available and consider the factors that have influenced their presentation and dissemination. It will identify issues which need to be addressed to encourage future use of this burgeoning collection of material by researchers and will consider how far existing metadata requirements address the needs of researchers. The viability and need for an ‘observatory of digital manuscripts’ will be considered. For all Institute of English Studies events please consult the website: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events