Datum: 13.05.2025
Uhrzeit: 18:00 bis 19:45 Uhr
Ort: Zoom
Diese Veranstaltung wird organisiert durch das Format:
Kommunikationsformate
VisColl and the Virtual Book Object: Rethinking Manuscript Collation in Digital Space
On May 13th at 18:00 Dr. Suzette van Haaren will be talking about “VisColl and the virtual book object: rethinking manuscript collation in digital space”. Digitising medieval manuscripts inevitably fragments their material integrity: while high-resolution images and metadata capture some aspects of the book, they often fail to convey its physical structure. One of the most challenging aspects to represent digitally is collation — the gathering and arrangement of quires that define a codex. Understanding a manuscript’s collation can be very important for studying its production, history, and use. VisColl, developed at the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, provides a powerful digital framework to model and visualise collation structures. Through its implementation in VCEditor, users can generate structured collation models, incorporating metadata and annotations that transform traditional manuscript descriptions into interactive, virtual research objects.
Based on interviews with scholars using VisColl, this talk explores how the tool reshapes manuscript studies, enabling personalised scholarly engagement with medieval materials. How does digitisation redefine materiality, and what does it mean to reconstruct the medieval book as a digital object? By examining the use of VisColl in small research settings, this talk argues that the tool fosters new modes of material engagement, ultimately shaping how knowledge of the medieval book is created in the digital age. We will also discuss new opportunities for the DH researchers and the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector.
Please register here to receive the Zoom link:
https://tu-darmstadt.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/glHpw9vmTDqjYSocLZ9zGg
For more information about VisColl, visit https://viscoll.org/.
The presentation is part of the lecture series “HERMES Open Colloquium”, organized by the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz. If you are interested in further events in this series, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter.
Please note:
The lecture itself will be recorded but not the introduction and discussion. Only the video and microphone of the presenters will be shown during the recording.
About the Contributor:
Suzette van Haaren is a postdoctoral researcher at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, affiliated with the collaborative research centre Virtuelle Lebenswelten (Virtual Worlds). Sub project B02 Virtuelles Mittelalter (Virtual Middle Ages) is dedicated to exploring the digitisation and digital uses of medieval objects in medievalist research. The primary focus of Suzette’s postdoctoral work is to investigate how the increasing integration of digital and virtual realms is reshaping the landscape of research practices. It aims to understand how digital research methods are evolving and the implications this has on our perceptions on and knowledge of the Middle Ages. Suzette finished her PhD at the University of St Andrews and the University of Groningen in May 2022, where she looked at the digitisation of medieval manuscripts from a theoretical materialist perspective. The thesis positions the digital medieval manuscript as important cultural and scientific object and explores ‘digital codicology’ as a method for studying the digital object.