Enriching digital manuscripts
Digital manuscripts are manuscripts that have been digitised. Images of the manuscript, combined with some metadata describing the manuscript and technical information about its structure, make the digital manuscript useable for viewing and reading.
Creating a digital manuscript object¶
We use the IIIF APIs for providing access to the images and their metadata. This means the images are made available through an IIIF Image server and a Manifest is created (semi-automatically) according to the specifications of the Presentation API.
Adding transcriptions and translations¶
We use the open-source application FromThePage to transcribe and translate digital manuscripts. To start a transcription project, you should import the manuscript by loading the IIIF Manifest file into FromThePage. You need to be authorised before you can do this.
Adding notes to manuscripts and discussing manuscripts¶
FromThePage can also be used to add notes to certain pages, for example to comment on a translation or to draw attention to a region of the page. For discussing the whole manuscript (when it consists of multiple pages), you can write a blogpost on this WordPress site and let other users comment, or start a forum topic.
Viewing digital manuscripts¶
Digital manuscripts can be viewed in detail using a IIIF viewer like Mirador or Tify. The viewers can be embedded within WordPress posts or be external to WordPress. Note that not all viewers can show transcriptions or translations with the images.