Date(s) : du 10 mai 2023 au 12 mai 2023

Lieu : CESR (Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance)

Despite the advancements in digitization, the study of books as objects, for the most part, still relies on autoptic investigations because traditional digitization transmediates only limited information regarding an object’s materiality. Autoptic observations are not always possible, and this has become even more evident and relevant with the pandemic crisis of Covid-19. While significant progress has been made in accessing written heritage through digitization efforts (IIIF, TEI), the digitization of the material features of books is still lagging and at the experimental phase. The availability of great numbers of textual data has permitted the development of distant reading techniques to discover patterns in texts and the utilization of artificial intelligence to read manuscripts (HTR) and printed books (OCR) en mass. The availability of digital data on the materiality of books would extend these practices to the book as an object. Recently, some projects have brought forward novel approaches to the digitization of material features of books but we lack a comprehensive methodology capable of bringing it together in a coherent research field: digital codicology. In the first two and a half days of the event, eminent scholars at the forefront of material digitization efforts will present their research. The last half-day will be dedicated to a round table and a working group to discuss and set the groundwork for a white paper on what digital codicology is and still needs to become the overarching field we foresee.

Rémi Jimenes (CESR-BVH) et Thierry Brouard (LIFAT) interviendront conjointement le jeudi 11 mai dans la Session 5 : Book Culture and Digital Paractices (II) pour présenter le lancement des travaux engagés dans le cadre de l’ANR TypoReF : TypoReF project : studying French Renaissance typography using digital images.