SharedCanvas

Digital Manuscripts and Interoperability Across Repositories

LIBER : promoting access to manuscript content

Paris, BnF, may 2012

How we started ?• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded numerous

manuscript digitization projects over several decades

• All had in common: – Inability to share data across silos to satisfy scholarly

use– Inability to leverage existing infrastructure– No sustainability model for data or access

• Goal:– Interoperability between repositories and tools

Who’s involved ?

• Repositories– Parker on the Web (Stanford)– Roman de la Rose (Johns Hopkins)– E-codices (Univ. Fribourg)– Gallica (BnF)– British Library– Bodleian Library

• Tools– T-PEN– Digital MappaeMundi (Drew Univ.)– TILE (Univ. Of Maryland)

What do we have now ?A world of silos

Roman de la Rose E-codices Gallica And so on…

Most digital libraries : what you can do ?

• Access data from a single repository, and sometimes federate content through OAI

• Use the tools that repository supports• See images in the way that repository

allows (or jump to another digital library hosting federated content)

• See curated descriptions of the material• See approved additional material• Search and browse to the library’s content

and sometimes federated content

What you can’t do…

• Access data from any other repositories• Use any other tools• See images any other way (like comparing 2

manuscripts kept in 2 different digital libraries)• Contribute or correct descriptions (often)• Add additional material or comments (often)• Search across repositories unless federated

search has been implemented

Defining interoperability• Break down silos• Separate data from applications• Share data models and

programming interfaces• Enable interactions at the tool

and repository level

• Use the content (images, records, transcriptions…) where they are without having to store multiple (manual) copies

• Ensure visibility for all institutions/data providers

Classical architecture

Image Data (Canonical)

Image Viewer

Discovery

Annotation

Metadata (Canonical)

Transcription

Image Viewer

Image Analysis

Discovery Tool X?

Repository

Repository User Interface

3rd-Party Tools

What does SharedCanvas do ?

• Provide, at the digital library level, a manifest : « here is what we have »

• Give a standardized and highly detailed description of the digital document’s organization

• If validated, link to any content generated about a manuscript, and/or use it without having to store this content

Open Annotation data model

Multiple content types

Rebinding example

A few demos

• Manifests for BNF Machaut manuscripts

• http://dms-data.stanford.edu/BnF/

• Images annotations of Morgan 804• http://www.shared-canvas.org/impl/demo1/