From Words to Diagrams: An Automated Visualization of Historical Bookbinding Structures
April 12, 2017
View Video (51 minutes)
About the Lecture:
Example of automated sewing diagram superimposed on original volume
Researchers use both images (pictures and drawings) and verbal descriptions (words) to document artifacts. In the last few decades, the recording and management of documentation data about material objects, including bookbindings, has switched from paper-based archives to databases, but sketches and diagrams are a form of documentation still carried out mostly by hand. Diagrams can present unique information, but often also serve as a visual representation of information recorded in the written documentation. This project proposes a methodology to harness verbal information in an XML database -- following the printed books survey schema from Ligatus 
-- and automatically generate standardized and scholarly-sound visual representations.
About the Speaker
Alberto Campagnolo is the CLIR/DLF/Mellon Fellow for Data Curation in Medieval Studies at the Preservation Research and Testing Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC (2016-2018). He trained as a book conservator (Spoleto, Italy, 2001) and has worked in that capacity in various institutions, including the Guildhall Library, the London Metropolitan Archives, and the Vatican Library. He studied Conservation of Library Materials at Ca’ Foscari University Venice (2006) and holds an MA in Digital Culture and Technology from King’s College London (2009). He pursued a PhD in Digital Humanities (Automated visualization of historical bookbinding structures ) from the University of the Arts, London (Ligatus Research Centre, 2015). Alberto has served on the Digital Medievalist board since 2014, first as Deputy Director, and as Director since 2015. He is especially interested in the digital representation of the physicality of books (see VisColl project ), and bookbindings in particular.
