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    • News & Views
    • Reviews
    • Highlights
  • Blogs
    • Manuscript Studies
      • Manuscript Studies: Contents List
    • International Congress on Medieval Studies
      • Abstracts of Congress Papers
        • Abstracts of Papers Listed by Author
        • Abstracts of Papers Listed by Year
  • About
    • Mission
    • People
      • Mildred Budny — Her Page
      • Adelaide Bennett Hagens
    • Activities
      • Events
      • Congress Activities
        • Sponsored Conference Sessions (1993‒)
          • Panels at the M-MLA Convention
        • Co-sponsored Conference Sessions (2006‒)
    • History
      • Seals, Matrices & Documents
      • Genealogies & Archives
  • Bembino
    • Multi-Lingual Bembino
  • Congress
    • Sponsored Conference Sessions (1993‒)
    • Co-sponsored Conference Sessions (2006‒)
    • Abstracts of Congress Papers
      • Abstracts Listed by Author
      • Abstracts Listed by Year
    • Kalamazoo Archive
    • Panels at the M-MLA Convention
      • Abstracts of Papers for the M-MLA Convention
  • Events
    • The Research Group Speaks: The Series
    • Seminars, Workshops, Colloquia & Symposia (1989–)
      • Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
      • Symposia on ‘The Transmission of the Bible’
      • The New Series
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Program: The Roads Taken
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Registration
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Registration Open
    • Abstracts of Papers for Events
      • Abstracts of Papers for Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
      • Abstracts of Papers for Symposia, Workshops & Colloquia
    • Receptions & Parties
    • Business Meetings
    • Photographic Exhibitions & Master Classes
    • Events Archive
  • ShelfLife
    • Journal Description
    • ShelfMarks: The RGME-Newsletter
    • Publications
      • “Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge” (1997)
        • Mildred Budny, ‘Catalogue’
        • The Illustrated Catalogue (1997)
      • The Illustrated Handlist
      • Semi-Official Counterfeiting in France 1380-1422
      • No Snap Decisions: Challenges of Manuscript Photography
    • History and Design of Our Website
  • Galleries
    • Watermarks & the History of Paper
    • Galleries: Contents List
    • Scripts on Parade
    • Texts on Parade
      • Latin Documents & Cartularies
      • New Testament Leaves in Old Armenian
    • Posters on Display
    • Layout Designs
  • Donations and Contributions
    • 2019 Anniversary Appeal
    • Orders
  • Contact Us
  • Links
    • Catalogs, Metadata, and Databases: A Handlist of Links
    • Manuscripts & Rare Books
    • Maps, Plans & Drawings
    • Seals, Seal-Matrices & Documents

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“Imaging Aids in the British Library” (December 1993)

September 5, 2016 in Seminars on Manuscript Evidence

Cover for Preliminary Report of the January 1994 Workshop on 'Image Processing and Manuscript Studies'A Visit
to the British Library
by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

15 December 1993

In preparation for the Workshop
on Image-Processing and Manuscript Studies”
at the Parker Library on 15 January 1994

in the Series of
Research Group Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’

The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

[First published on our website on 5 September 2016]

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Claudius A III, folio 8r. Frontispiece with Gregory the Great enthroned in a niche and reverent monks at his feet. Reproduced by permission

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Claudius A III, folio 8r. Reproduced by permission

A 1-day visit to the British Library in December 1993 prepared for the Research Group’s January 1994 workshop on optical imaging techniques as aids for manuscript studies.

Organised by Mildred Budny and Tony Parker and held at the Parker Library, that approaching workshop on Image-Processing for Manuscript Studies” aimed to consider developments in imaging through photographic and computerised methods, as a means of gathering information and feedback about techniques of image processing, both existing and planned, with a view toward applications, capabilities, limitations, desiderata, and future potential.

Participants at the workshop would include experts in manuscript studies, conservation, photography, imaging aids, computing, radio astronomy, engineering, forensics and medical imaging.  The speakers would come from the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, the University of Cambridge, the British Library, the University of Kentucky, the Questioned Documents Section of the Metropolitan Police Forensics Laboratory, Ipswich Hospital, and Keith & Pelling Ltd.  The other participants would come from both near and far.

Meanwhile, there were elements of information to gather and materials to prepare.

Fact-Finding, Demonstrations, and Explorations

Postcard with frontal view of The British Museum.

Viewing the Front of The British Museum via Postcard.

The Visit took place in the Manuscripts Conservation Studio of the Collection and Preservation Directorate of The British Library.  At the time, remember, The British Library (created on 1 July 1972 as a result of the British Library Act 1973) still remained in its “old” building, before the move in 1999 to the new building, specially built for the purpose, on the Euston Road, Number 96. That is, the British Library remained in the same building as The British Museum, out of which it had emerged as an entity of its own.  The Department of Western Manuscripts remained in its domicile, in the East Wing of the building (designed in Greek Revival Style by Sir Robert Smirke and completed in 1852), facing Great Russell Street and the Front Entrance.  The Manuscripts Conservation Studio occupied quarters in the Basement below.

During the years of her long-term research on manuscripts at The British Library for the Ph.D. (London 1984), Mildred Budny (a founder member and by now Director of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence) had been a frequent visitor to the Manuscripts Conservation Studio, at Tony Parker’s invitation, to learn about new equipment, new techniques, and new discoveries as part of the conservation work on many forms of materials, manuscript and other. As a result both of such visits and meetings elsewhere, conferences included, it was “natural” to learn, for example, about the Beowulf Digitisation Project (1992–) already as it was beginning to take shape and form.

Here, thanks to that Project (and other developments), you may see, right now, here and now, how the sole surviving medieval copy (partly burnt) of Beowulf begins:

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 132r. Reproduced by permission.

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 132r. Reproduced by permission.

On the day, we could inspect the Real Thing, viewed with the relevant equipment, and guided by a founder of the Beowulf Digitisation Project in a formative period.  At the January Workshop on “Image-Processing for Manuscript Studies”, Kevin Kiernan also joined the presentations, although that time not in the presence of the manuscript itself, but represented by proxy, and moreover by computer transmission of images via the University of Kentucky to Cambridge. (You may take such representation for granted, nowadays, but we report an earlier stage in the worldwide transformation of the transmission of images of manuscripts, etc . . . )

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 140r. Reproduced by permission.

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 140r. Reproduced by permission.

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 163v. Reproduced by permission.

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 163v. Reproduced by permission.

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 139r. Reproduced by permission.

© The British Library Board. Cotton MS Vitellius A XV folio 139r. Reproduced by permission.

*****

Report of the Visit, Now with Illustrations

'Imaging Aids' on 15 December 1993. Photography © Mildred Budny

‘Imaging Aids’ on 15 December 1993. Photography © Mildred Budny.

Front cover of the assembled booklet with the Profile of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and the full set of 5 Annual Reports to the Leverhulme Trust, which funded the 5-year major Research ProjectA report of this December Visit appears as an Appendix to the “Preliminary Report” of the 15 January Workshop, printed and circulated as a Booklet after its event.  A similar Report for the December Visit to the British Library appears in the Fifth, and Final, Annual Report to the Leverhulme Trust (1993–4) on the 5-year Research Project at The Parker Library on “The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts” (Leverhulme Trust ref. F665).  On the series of Annual Reports, see our Publications.

We now transcribe the Report here, for you to see both on our website and in our Research Group font Bembino — our own copyright font, designed over more recent years by one of the participants of this Visit.  (You may download this font for FREE here.) You may also view the Appendix on its original page in the downloadable Booklet.  Here, we add some links and, by permission from The British Library, several images from the relevant manuscripts examined during the Visit.

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Tags: Bembino Digital Font, Beowulf Digitisation Project, Beowulf Manuscript, British Library, Cotton MS Claudius A III, Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv, digitization of manuscripts, Gregory the Great, Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Imaging Aids, Manuscript Conservation Studio, Saint Dunstan, Saint Dunstan's 'Classbook', Seminars on Manuscript Evidence
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Image-Processing and Manuscript Studies (January 1994)

January 1, 2014 in Events, Manuscript Studies, Photographic Exhibition, Reports

Cover for Preliminary Report of the January 1994 Workshop on 'Image Processing and Manuscript Studies'A one-day Workshop held
at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

15 January 1994

In the Series of Research Group Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

[First published on 13 October 2015 from our Archives, with updates]

This workshop focused upon optical imaging techniques as aids for manuscript studies.  It considered developments in imaging through photographic and computerised methods, as it provided a forum for information and feedback about techniques of image processing, both existing and planned:  applications, capabilities, limitations, desiderata, and future potential.  Participants included experts in manuscript studies, conservation, photography, imaging aids, computing, radio astronomy, engineering, forensics and medical imaging.

Our First Event Report in Booklet Form

Front cover of the assembled booklet with the Profile of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and the full set of 5 Annual Reports to the Leverhulme Trust, which funded the 5-year major Research ProjectA ‘Preliminary Report’ of the proceedings of the Workshop was prepared and printed by the Research Group as a small-format Booklet soon after the event.

Following the move of our principal base to the United States later that year, not to the destination expected, but to Princeton, we thought that the Booklet had disappeared.  Describing the event for our upgraded website (in October 2015), we had to rely on the corrected proof-copy, transcribed here.  More recently, from another section of our Archives, the printed copy of the Booklet has emerged, and we publish it as well in downloadable form.

It represents the first of our printed Booklets for any of our events.  It followed the model of our Annual Reports for the Research Project, composed principally by Mildred Budny and circulated in printed copies both individually and as a collected group, as described among our Publications).  Those reports summarised our Seminars and Workshops, along with accounts of our other activities and the research work itself.

It also followed the model of the Exhibition Booklets for the exhibitions at the Parker Library of “Canterbury at Corpus” (1991) and “Matthew Parker in Cambridge” (1993), although those are illustrated with our photographs from Parker Library materials. Both were printed in-house and circulated at the events, as well as afterward. Both were reprinted, but in quarto format, in the Old English Newsletter, 24:4 (Summer 1991), Appendix A (= pages A-1–A-7) and 27:1 (Fall 1993), Apendix A (A-1–A-8); the latter issue is available online in the OEN Archives, but not yet the former. In their original design, these Exhibition Booklets emanated in A3 format as a group of single sheets stapled twice along the left-hand side; the 1991 Exhibition Booklet, with text and photographs by Mildred Budny, was also prepared as an A5 booklet of folded and nested leaves with the pages of text and image reduced to half-size in photocopying. Similar layout in small-format booklets came to pertain also to the Annual Reports. Such forms of in-house design, layout, and publication by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence prepared precedents, and customs, for the Workshop Booklet.

Then, after the Research Project was completed and the Research Group moved to the New World, our scholarly Events mainly focused upon Symposia for some years.  As our Annual Series of Symposia on “The Transmission of the Bible” gathered momentum, their Programs, with brief Abstracts of the Papers, grew from single or double-sided pages (1995, 1996, and 1997), and took the form of short booklets, as here:

  • 1998 Symposium exterior
    1998 Symposium interior
  • 1999 Symposium exterior
    1999 Symposium interior
  • 2000 Symposium exterior
    2000 Symposium interior

Those folded and unstapled booklets comprise either a double-sided 4-page unit (1 quarto sheet folded in half as a bifolium) or a menu-like tryptich (1 legal-size sheet folded in three) with wings to open and close at will.  Each case was issued in printed form at the event and circulated afterward also in printed form.  In this respect, the Symposium Booklets differ from the 1994 Imaging Seminar Report, which emerged after the event — indeed like the Annual Reports of our events overall (1990–1994).  The 1994 “Preliminary Report” takes the form of 6 double-sided sheets folded into 12 pages as a small-format booklet (A5), although it also circulated as full-page sheets (A3).

Cover Page for 2002 British Museum Colloquium Program Booklet, with Abstracts of Papers, compiled and edited by Mildred Budny, and laid out and printed by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence.2016 Symposium Program Booklet Cover Page with borderA longer booklet accompanied our 2002 Colloquium at the British Museum. That case stands within The New Series of our Seminars, Workshops, Colloquia & Symposia.

Within the New Series, the Booklets have become a regular, but not necessarily invariable, feature, while illustrations enter their pages more and more, through generous donations of images for the purposes.  Our experience in designing, laying out, and typesetting our Illustrated Bulletin ShelfLife (2006–) prepared the way for the illustrated Booklets as a way of life.

Each case was issued in printed form at the event and circulated afterward also in printed form, until we acquired a website and the site could accommodate them. Our tradition is to “launch” the publication of the booklet in its printed form at the event itself. Then we may post it on the website and circulate it elsewhere.

More recent, and illustrated, examples of the booklets employ our copyright font Bembino. Issued in print at the event, as is the custom, they now appear on our site in downloadable form:

  • 2013 Symposium on “Identity and Authenticity”
  • 2014 Symposium on “Recollections of the Past”
  • 2014 Colloquium on “When the Dust has Settled”
  • 2015 Congress (“Predicting the Past”)
  • 2016 Symposium on “Words & Deeds”
  • 2016 Congress (“Crusading” and “Mirror”)

See also our list of Publications.  The “Imaging” Booklet joins their company.

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Tags: Bembino Digital Font, British Library, Corpus Christi College MS 111, Corpus Christi College MS 12, Corpus Christi College MS 173, Corpus Christi College MS 197B, Corpus Christi College MS 201, Corpus Christi College MS 23, Corpus Christi College MS 422, Corpus Christi College MS 44, Cotton MS Claudius A III, Cotton MS Otho C VI, Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv, DScriptorium, Electronic Beowulf, Imaging Aids, Manuscript studies, Parker Library, RGME Program Booklets, RGME Publications, RGME Webmaster
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