The Electronic Beowulf and Digital Restoration
Andrew Prescott
A modern edition, made by a person really conversant with the
language he illustrates, will in all probability be much
more like the original than the MS. copy, which, even in the earliest
times, was made by an ignorant or indolent transcriber.
J.M. Kemble, Beowulf (1835 ed.), p. xxiv.
I.
On 26 October 1815, Richard Price, an English bookseller and antiquary,
wrote from Munich to the Danish scholar, Grímur Jónsson
Thorkelin. He began as follows: 'Your letter of 26th July did
not reach me until my arrival here in the beginning of October
and its content surprised me not a little as I had already in
May last intrusted the promised plate to a friend who was about
to visit Copenhagen. But if my astonishment was the great I leave
you to conceive what it this day has been upon receiving back
my packet accompanied by a letter informing me that my friend
has for these last four months lain dangerously ill at Gottingen:
This has thrown me into a dilemma from which I hardly know how
to extricate myself and my regret is so much the more increased
as the poem is now published. I have however determined upon writing
you for instructions and shall detain the plate till I hear from
you' (Edinburgh University Library, La. III. 379, no. 677*).
The book to which Price refers was Thorkelin's edition of Beowulf,
the first complete edition of the poem, which had been published
earlier that year in Copenhagen. Thorkelin had already suffered
many vicissitudes in producing this edition. He had first seen
the only medieval manuscript of the poem at the British Museum
in the 1780s (Kiernan 1986). He had made substantial progress
on his edition when his library was wrecked and many of his papers
destroyed during the British siege of Copenhagen in 1807. He was
ready to give up work on the poem but, according to Conybeare,
'the encouragement...of some powerful friends, induced the literary
veteran to recommence the task of preparing the work for the press'
(Conybeare 1826, p. 32). Price was presumably one of those friends
who urged Thorkelin to complete his task. The lost plate was doubtless
an illustration of the Beowulf manuscript. It would have
made a handsome addition to the volume, and its failure to reach
Copenhagen must have been a bitter blow to Thorkelin. It is not
known what Price eventually did with the plate, which is a pity,
since it would have provided valuable evidence of the state of
the manuscript at this time. Thorkelin does not seem to have remembered
Price kindly. Writing four years later to Francis Douce, formerly
Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, he recalled how 'A
certain Mr Price came here, you know him perhaps, and that is
enough, for I never learned to know him, that gentleman preyed
the groves of our Danish muses, and carried away spoils, equal
to the Golden Fleece. He boasted to have done the same in England
'
(Bodleian Library, MS. Douce d. 23, ff. 123-4).
The story of the lost plate for the Thorkelin edition of Beowulf
might be seen as prefiguring some of our experiences with the
Electronic Beowulf. In October 1993, the editor of the electronic
facsimile, Professor Kevin S. Kiernan of the University
of Kentucky, was returning to the United States after a successful
trial of the digital camera at the British Library. He was carrying
on a SyQuest cartridge some images of the manuscript he was intending
to use in a presentation announcing the project at a conference
in Washington D.C. organised by the Association of Research Libraries.
Professor Kiernan was concerned that the data might be affected
by the x-ray equipment at the airport, but he was assured it was
safe. On returning to Kentucky, he was disconcerted to find that
all the images had been erased from the cartridge. Frantic attempts
were made to transfer copies of the images to the United States
in time for the presentation. At that time Internet availability
in the British Library was limited and, in any case, trying to
transfer large image files across the small capacity lines then
available was a very time-consuming process. My PC had to be dismantled
to turn it into an FTP site and technicians had to get up in the
middle of the night to supervise the file transfer. Eventually
all but one of the images were successfully transferred from London
to Kentucky and the presentation went ahead successfully (Kiernan
1994).
This story perhaps illustrates some of the advantages of digital
technology in that, unlike Price and Thorkelin, we were able to
dispatch lost images quickly over large distances. However, the
most striking feature of these two stories is the way in which,
two hundred years after Thorkelin, scholars feel that existing
images do not sufficiently convey the manuscript context of this
enigmatic poem, and consider it worth struggling with the latest
technologies to try and give a better understanding of the problems
posed by the Beowulf manuscript. A distinctive feature
of Beowulf studies throughout this time has been the way
in which scholars in each generation have used new technical aids
to explore the manuscript. In 1882, Beowulf was one of
the first medieval manuscripts to be made available in photographic
facsimile (Zupitza 1882). Just before the Second World War, A.
H. Smith used ultra-violet photography to try and decipher badly
faded folios in the manuscript (Smith 1938). In the 1980s, Kevin
Kiernan experimented with the use of medical imaging equipment
to try and read erased portions of the manuscript and also used
fibre-optic light to read letters obscured by conservation work
(Kiernan 1984, 1991). The pioneering use of technical approaches
of this kind is very unusual in medieval studies. One cannot imagine
any other medieval text in which the use of photography or ultra-violet
light are accepted as key developments in the critical history
of the text, as they are, for example, in the Beowulf Handbook
recently produced by Robert Bjork and John Niles (1996, pp. 35-37).
The Electronic Beowulf therefore belongs to a long tradition
of technically-aided exploration of the Beowulf manuscript.
This technical analysis of the manuscript is not simply due to
scholars trying to squeeze more and more information from an already
over-studied manuscript. It is due to particular problems posed
by the manuscript itself which reflect its very chequered history.
In order to understand why these various technical approaches
have assumed such an important role in Beowulf studies,
it is necessary to look more closely at the history of the manuscript.
II.
The history of the Beowulf manuscript was described in
detail for the first time by Kevin Kiernan in his groundbreaking
book Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript (1981), a reprint
of which is being bundled with the Electronic Beowulf CD
ROM. The following account of the manuscript is based largely
on Kiernan's work. The only known medieval copy of Beowulf
is found in Cotton MS. Vitellius A.xv, a volume from the library
of Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631). Cotton's library was given to
the nation by his grandson in 1700, transferred to the British
Museum on its foundation in 1753 and thence to the British Library
on its creation in 1973. Cotton's library was relatively small
-- less than a thousand volumes at the time of his death -- but
contained many of the most important manuscripts of medieval English
history and literature. Among his treasures were the Lindisfarne
Gospels, two of the original letters patent of 1215 by which Magna
Carta was promulgated, the only known manuscripts of Sir Gawain
and Pearl, and several versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
At the time of Cotton's death, his library was in the process
of being reorganised into a pressmark system based on the names
of the roman emperors whose busts stood on the top of each press
of manuscripts. Thus the pressmark for the Beowulf manuscript,
Vitellius A.xv, indicates that it was the fifteenth volume on
the first shelf of the press marked by the bust of the Emperor
Vitellius.
Vitellius A.xv in fact contains at least two separate and unrelated
manuscripts bound together by Cotton. The first contains an ownership
inscription recording that it belonged in the fourteenth century
to Southwick Priory in Hampshire and is known as the Southwick
Codex. The second is known as the Nowell Codex, from an ownership
signature of the antiquary Laurence Nowell, dated 1563. The manuscript
entered Cotton's ownership before 1612. The Nowell Codex contains,
apart from Beowulf, four other unrelated Old English works:
the St Christopher fragment, The Wonders of the East,
Alexander's Letter to Aristotle, and the Judith
fragment. Cotton used a leaf from a mid-fourteenth century illuminated
manuscript (now reconstructed as Royal MS. 13.D.I*) as a flyleaf
for the volume, something he did for a number of his most important
manuscripts (Tite and Carley 1992).
The history of the Beowulf manuscript in Cotton's hands
already creates a number of problems. Cotton's action in binding
together the Southwick and Nowell volumes was undoubtedly by modern
standards cavalier. If he was willing to create an artificial
volume by joining two manuscripts together, perhaps he went further.
It has been suggested, for example, that the Judith fragment
was originally separate and was added to the volume in early modern
times. If the Judith fragment was separate, how can we
be sure that the Beowulf section was not also originally
a separate manuscript? There are some hints that perhaps this
may have once been the case. Trying to establish the original
physical structure of a manuscript such as this requires attention
to small physical details such as patterns of ruling, the arrangement
of hair and flesh sides of the vellum, and even the appearance
of burn marks or worm holes. In analysing fine details like these,
technical aids are very useful -- high magnification, for example,
is one obvious requirement.
Cotton's librarian, Richard James, added a list of contents to
the beginning of the manuscript. Intriguingly, he seems to have
been baffled by Beowulf and left a blank for that article.
Consequently, Beowulf is not mentioned in the description
of Vitellius A.xv in Thomas Smith's 1696 catalogue of the Cotton
library. Vitellius A.xv was used by Franciscus Junius who transcribed
the Judith fragment sometime between 1628 and 1650, but
he apparently took no interest in Beowulf. The credit for
first drawing attention to Beowulf belongs to Humfrey Wanley,
who in 1705 described the poem in his catalogue of Old English
manuscripts, transcribing a few lines from it, and drew attention
to it in his correspondence. Wanley's catalogue was apparently
responsible for leading Thorkelin to the manuscript, thereby inaugurating
the modern editorial tradition.
While Thorkelin's edition undoubtedly finally put Beowulf on
the literary map, it was far from being a scholarly success. In
the letter already cited, Richard Price described his attempts
to promote Thorkelin's edition in England: 'In conformity with
my promise I applied on my arrival in England to those booksellers
whom I knew offering the sale of the intire impression of the
poem and producing your letter for a description of its contents.
I am however sorry to add without success. The principle and never-failing
objection was the Latin translation which they declared
would not be read or understood by those upon whom they would
reckon for the most certain sale namely the English Antiquary.'
More seriously, N.F.S. Grundtvig listed in a review of the edition
numerous errors by Thorkelin and in a Danish translation of the
poem published in 1820 gave forty-five pages of corrections to
Thorkelin's edition. In 1826, John Conybeare in his Illustrations
of Anglo-Saxon Poetry also drew attention to many errors by
Thorkelin, but charitably reminded the reader of the difficult
circumstances under which the edition had been produced (1826,
pp. 30-32). More harshly, John Mitchell Kemble who produced a new
edition of the text in 1833 roundly denounced Thorkelin: 'not
five lines of Thorkelin's edition can be found in succession,
in which some gross fault either in the transcript or the translation,
does not betray the editor's utter ignorance of the Anglo-Saxon
language' (1835, p. xxix).
Kemble's edition was dedicated to Jacob Grimm and, applying the
insights of the new philological learning, Kemble dealt almost
as severely with the medieval scribes as he did with Thorkelin:
'The numerous blunders both in sense and versification, the occurence
of archaic forms found in no other Anglo-Saxon work, and the cursory
illusions to events which to the Anglo-Saxons must soon have become
unintelligible, are convincing proofs that our present text is
only a copy, and a careless copy too' (1835, p. xxi). Kemble went
on to declare that 'All persons who have had much experience of
Anglo-Saxon MSS. know how hopelessly incorrect they are in every
way...which can perhaps only be accounted for by the supposition
that professional copyists brought to their task (in itself confusing
enough) both lack of knowledge and lack of care' (1835, pp. xxiii-xxiv).
It would be an over-simplification to suggest that many modern
scholars still share Kemble's contempt for the original scribes.
Kemble was firing the opening shot in a still unresolved battle
over how far editors are entitled to emend texts. However, the
modern scholarly consensus still perhaps reflects Kemble's disdain
for the Anglo-Saxon scribe in assuming that the manuscript we
have is a more or less accidental survival with no special authority.
The Beowulf manuscript dates from the first quarter of
the eleventh century. The orthodox view is that the poem itself
is fundamentally far older, dating back perhaps to the eighth
century. The exact mechanism by which it was transmitted over
two hundred years is not agreed -- presumably a mixture of oral
transmisson and, in the later stages, written exemplars. If this
is the case, one might assume that the existing manuscript would
be relatively straightforward in character, but it is not.
The manuscript is the work of two scribes. They carefully checked
their work. As Kevin Kiernan put it, 'The extensive proofreading
done by both scribes, and the nature of their corrections, are
proof that the Beowulf MS. was subjected to intelligent
scrutiny. The Beowulf MS. contains scores of erasures and
scores of written corrections' (1981, p. 191). Kiernan sees these
corrections as suggesting that the poem might be contemporary
with the manuscript, but even if this is not accepted, it is clearly
essential in establishing the nature of the text to investigate
these corrections further. This is another area where technical
aids can be of great importance. Many of these erasures can be
read with the aid of ultra-violet light and, as Kiernan shows,
they raise doubts about many accepted readings.
In other places, more radical problems occur with the manuscript.
Thorkelin drew attention to various gaps in the text, which he
attributed to the great age of the manuscript and later damage.
However, the origin of these problems may lay further back. On
the folio numbered 192v on the manuscript (196v according to the
current British Library foliation), something very strange has
happened. It looks as if the ink in some words in the middle of
lines 2886-2891 of the poem has run as a result of water damage.
But closer inspection suggests that water was probably not the
culprit, as there is no evidence of water damage elsewhere on
the folio. Another explanation might be that the letters have
been touched up by a more recent hand, but again the way in which
the ink has spread outwards makes this unlikely. Above these words
is an erasure with an interlineation. Kiernan points out that,
under ultra-violet light, the erasure can be read, and consists
of the same words as the interlineation (1981, p. 218; cf. Kiernan
1994). This suggests that perhaps the scribe had had problems
at this point with the surface of the vellum, and some time after
he first wrote the folio, restored parts of the text which had
become damaged.
On the folio numbered 179 on the manuscript (182 according to
the current British Library foliation), even more extensive textual
loss occurs, but not in a consistent pattern. Whole words and
phrases have disappeared, either as the result of erasures or
later damage. Some of these lost sections have a curious grey
discoloration. Tilman Westphalen first suggested that this page
was a palimpsest, a proposal which Kiernan endorsed, pointing
to other evidence apparently supporting it. This view has not
been generally accepted, but it is impossible to deny that something
very extraordinary has happened to the manuscript at this point.
The ultra-violet photographs in the black and white facsimiles
fail to convey adequately the dramatic appearance of this folio.
This is partly because the ultra-violet light fluoresces with the grey
patches, obscuring rather than revealing the lost text beneath.
The frontispiece of Kiernan's 1981 book is a superb colour photograph
of this folio (unfortunately very badly reproduced in the reprint),
which conveys the appearance of this folio more effectively than
the black and white facsimiles. The erased words look tantalisingly
legible in the colour photograph, but, although enough can be
made out to throw doubt on some of the traditional readings on
this page, a consistent reading of the lost text is not possible.
It was problems such as these which prompted an early experiment
in photography of the manuscript. On 9 April 1864, the Anglo-Saxon
scholar Oswald Cockayne was authorised by the Trustees of the
Museum to make a complete transcript of Vitellius A.xv. He evidently
ran into difficulty with some of the damaged pages, and on 23
July 1864, the Trustees agreed 'to have the effect of Photography
tried on a leaf or two of the injured Cottonian MS. Vitell. A.XV,
with a view to the recovery, if possible, of some portion of the
now illegible text' (British Library, Department of Manuscripts
Archives). A collation by Cockayne of Thorpe's edition of Beowulf
with the original manuscript apparently made at this time
survives in the Houghton Library at Harvard (Houghton Library,
28286.27.7), and a note by Cockayne on the pastedown of the back
cover confirms that 'Fol. 179a. is the one to try by Fotography'.
(I owe this reference to Kevin Kiernan). The photographs made
for Cockayne unfortunately do not survive. Cockayne's hope that
photography would help make out these difficult passages was not
as quixotic as it might seem. At that time, manuscripts were read
in the gloomy natural light of the Round Reading Room, and it
is likely that the strong lights required for photography would
have made parts of the text legible which could not be seen in
the Reading Room.
In 1981 Kevin Kiernan urged the use of electronic photography
and digital image processing to study the 'palimpsest folio' further
-- a visionary viewpoint at a time when the personal computer was
only just appearing and most humanities research was pencil driven
(Kiernan 1981, p. 233). Inspired by the work of John Benton at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Kiernan attempted in 1984 to videotape
images of the manuscript under special lighting conditions to
provide input for a Kontron Mipron-D microcodable array-processor
at the University of Kentucky, in the hope of being able to enhance
these images digitally and make out the lost words. The conversion
of a British videotape to American standards meant that the results
were less satisfactory than hoped, but they nevertheless showed
that digital image processing could greatly improve the contrast
of the image and thus potentially help in reading erasures. Three
years later, Kiernan set up a complete image processing station
at the British Library to make direct images of the manuscript
(producing the then enormous quantity of ten megabytes of data).
This improved the legibility of some sections of the page and
raised some doubts about accepted readings, but by no means resolved
the problems raised by this folio. It was however a significant
pointer to the future (Kiernan 1991).
The medieval text itself thus also raises many major issues, which
again are susceptible to technically-aided analysis. However,
this by no means exhausts the problems raised by the Beowulf
manuscript. Between the time that Wanley borrowed the manuscript
and Thorkelin first saw it, it suffered another great trauma.
The gift of the Cotton library to the nation in 1700 had embarassed
the government, which was unwilling to meet the costs of providing
adequate accommodation or other administrative expenses. It was
left in Sir Robert Cotton's decaying house at Westminster. In
1717, John Elphinstone, the Keeper of the Library, petitioned
the Treasury, pointing out that, at the time of the gift, 'King
William of glorious memory did promise that a sufficient allowance
should be paid to those imployed to attend the said library; which
was not done in his said Maiesties Reign'. Not only had Elphinstone
not been paid for attending the Library himself, but he had been
forced to pay for cleaning and so on out of his own pocket. At
the time of George I's coronation, 'Cotton House and Gardens were
thought a convenient place, for dressing the dinner, and preparing
other necessaries', so that Elphinstone, 'fearing any accident
that might happen by the many fires made there, was at the charge
of setting up a bed and attending day and night in the said Library...at
extraordinary trouble and charge.' (British Library, Additional
MS. 61615, f. 81).
When Cotton House finally fell into a completely ruinous state,
the manuscripts were moved to Essex House near the Strand. Essex
House was, however, thought to be a fire risk, so the manuscripts
were transferred again to Ashburnham House in Little Dean's Yard
at Westminster. On 23 October 1731, Dr Bentley, the former Keeper
of the Royal Library, staying at Ashburnham House with his son,
the then Keeper, was woken up by the smell of smoke. While the
librarians busied themselves trying to rescue the manuscripts,
the fire spread to the presses, so that it was necessary to break
open the cases and throw volumes out of the window.
The morning after the fire, Little Dean's Yard must have been
a sad sight, littered with fragments of burnt manuscripts, which
the boys of Westminster School picked up and kept as souvenirs.
Vitellius A.xv was comparatively lucky. It was badly singed around
the edges, and left smoke stained and brittle. Water from the
fire engines had stained many of the folios, causing the ink to
run in some places. The heat had caused some edges of the manuscript
to stick together, and it seems from the introduction to his edition
that when Thorkelin looked at it fifty years later he had to force
some of the leaves apart (Bjork 1996, pp. 312-3). The conservation
technology of the eighteenth century was not equal to the task
of stabilising the condition of a heat-damaged vellum manuscript
such as this one. It is possible that some rudimentary conservation
work was undertaken on the manuscript just after the fire, to
dry it out and prevent the growth of mould, but basically it was
left unconserved, and was transferred in this state to the British
Museum in 1757. Following the move to the Museum, the manuscript
was made freely available to readers. It was consulted by Thomas
Astle, John Topham and others in the 1770s, who were perhaps responsible
for helping to draw the manuscript to Thorkelin's attention (Prescott
1995).
The Royal Library in Copenhagen contains two transcripts of Beowulf
used by Thorkelin. The first, known as Thorkelin A, was made by
an unknown copyist who did not know Old English but made a spirited
attempt to represent the appearance of the original manuscript.
The second, Thorkelin B, is in Thorkelin's own hand and is apparently
a working transcript used by him in preparing his edition. These
transcripts are precious documents since they record hundreds
of letters which afterwards crumbled away from the fire-damaged
manuscript (Kiernan 1986). The textual loss may have been made
worse by a misguided attempt to bind up the manuscript undertaken
by the Museum binder Elliot under the direction of Joseph Planta
at the time he was preparing his catalogue of the Cotton collection
between 1793 and 1796. Since Elliot's binding apparently did not
protect the fragile edges of the manuscript, it did little to
stop the gradual crumbling away of the manuscript (Prescott 1997).
It was used by Sharon Turner sometime before 1805, by Conybeare
in 1817, by Frederic Madden in 1824, by Grundtvig in 1829, by
Benjamin Thorpe in 1830, by Kemble sometime before 1833, and doubtless
by many others besides (Bjork and Niles 1996, pp. 35-6). Every
time one of these readers used the manuscript, more pieces of
text fell off the edges and ended their life on the floor of the
British Museum.
In 1837, Madden became Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum,
and, prompted by the discovery of a great mass of unrestored fragments
of Cotton manuscripts lying forgotten in a garret room, determined
to have all the manuscripts fully restored (Prescott 1997). He
used a binder named Henry Gough to inlay each leaf of the damaged
vellum manuscripts (Kiernan 1981, Prescott 1997). Gough's technique
as applied to another Cotton manuscript was vividly described
by Oswald Cockayne in 1864: 'The binder first soaked the ruins
[of the manuscript] in water, to make them limp; he then flattened
them, and for this purpose was obliged often to cut through the
edges, and stretch them by pins, widening all the flaws; stout
pieces of cardboard were then prepared as a frame to carry the
leaves, which were fixed into these paper frames by ligaments
of goldbeaters skin' (Cockayne 1864, pp. lxxv-lxxvi).
The precise technique used by Gough in preparing the paper frames
which protect the edge of the manuscript has been elucidated by
Kevin Kiernan (1981, pp. 68-70). The material used by Gough was more
akin to cartridge paper than cardboard. He traced around the edge
of each damaged leaf on a sheet of this heavy paper. He then cut
a hole of a few centimetres inside the traced outline to leave
a retaining edge for the vellum. The leaf was then glued to the
paper and secured with tissue and skin where necessary. This work
was undertaken under the close supervision of Madden, who probably
devised the techniques used by Gough. On 7 August 1845, Madden
noted in his diary that 'Gough is getting on nicely with the restoration
of the injured vellum manuscripts and brought me up today the
Bede of the 8th century, Tib. A. XIV, and the Beowulf and other
Saxon treatises, Vitell A. XV, both inlaid and perfectly repaired
and preserved' (Prescott 1997). Madden then sorted the inlaid
sheets of Vitellius A.xv into an appropriate order and sent them
off to be bound by the Museum binder, Tuckett. Madden's work in
sorting the leaves can be traced from various pencil numerations
made by him at the bottom right hand corner and (partly cropped
away by Tuckett) the extreme top right hand corner of each leaf
(the so-called fifth and fourth foliations) (Prescott 1997).
Gough's work did indeed, in Madden's words, 'perfectly repair'
Vitellius A. xv. It has not suffered further textual loss since
1845. Gough's restoration is, however, now beginning to show signs
of age. In certain places the vellum is beginning to come adrift
from the paper frame, and Tuckett's binding, the back of which
has been broken by years of exhibition display, will require replacement
before too long. Since Gough's work was not (to use the modern
conservation jargon) 'reversible', any future restoration may
well destroy some of the evidence carefully preserved by Gough
-- another reason for making a full record of the condition of
the manuscript at the present time. Nevertheless, Gough's work
was a marvel for its time. The skill and utility of the restoration
have been well summarised by Kiernan: 'The new binding is a remarkable
piece of craftsmanship, as well as of preservation...In addition
to protecting the edges of the vellum from further deterioration,
the heavy paper frames also obviate the need to handle the vellum
at all while reading the MS.' (1981, pp. 68-9).
The preservation of the manuscript, however, came at a price.
In order to have a retaining edge for the paper frame, Gough had
to conceal letters around the edge of the verso of each leaf.
Zupitza lamented the loss of these letters in 1882, and attempted
to make them out by holding them up to the light (Zupitza 1882,
p. vi). But, as Kiernan has emphasised, at least there is something
left to decipher -- if Gough had not covered up these letters,
they would have joined the others on the floor of the Reading
Room. In 1984, this conservation strategy was triumphantly vindicated
by Kiernan, who pointed out that by holding a powerful fibre-optic
light (a cold light source which cannot damage the manuscript)
behind the concealed letters, many of the letters which Zupitza
could not make out could be read (Kiernan 1984). He was able to
transcribe many of them, but felt frustrated that it was impossible
to obtain a photographic record of them. In order to make out
the concealed letters, the fibre-optic light often had to be held
at a very oblique angle. Kiernan guessed that by the time a photograph
had been taken and the film processed, it would be impossible
to tell if it was an accurate record of what the fibre-optic light
had revealed. Subsequent tests showed that this was indeed the
case. The problem of obtaining images of these concealed letters
has been a central concern of the Electronic Beowulf project.
At every stage of its history, the Beowulf manuscript presents
problems to which technical aids apparently offer help, if not
solutions. The Electronic Beowulf represents the most concerted
attempt to date to try and bring technical assistance to bear
on the investigation of these issues.
III.
The Electronic Beowulf project began in 1993. During a
conference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Professor Paul
E. Szarmach, formerly of the State University of New York, Binghamton,
and now Director of the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University,
suggested to me that the time was right for such a project. Our
first action was to contact Kevin Kiernan, who reacted to the
idea with enthusiasm -- for some time, he had kept an e-mail folder
called e-Beowulf, and was delighted at the possibility that this
dream might be realised more quickly than he had imagined. As
is evident from the preceding account of the history of the Beowulf
manuscript, Kiernan's work had already anticipated many of the
themes which are drawn together by the electronic facsimile. His
1981 book had put forward the controversial view that not only
was Beowulf contemporary with the Beowulf manuscript
but that 'the extant MS. actually was the poet's (or poets') working
copy' (Kiernan, 1981, p. 270). Kiernan's arguments have generally
not been accepted, but it has meant that scholars have had to
pay closer attention to the manuscript, as the only piece of physical
evidence for the origins of the poem. Moreover, Kiernan's subsequent
work has emphasised how the history of the reception of this text
is a very complex one. He produced the first textual analysis
of the Thorkelin transcripts and, as has been seen, made the first
modern transcription of the letters in the manuscript concealed
by Gough's conservation work (Kiernan 1984, Kiernan 1986).
Prescott and Szarmach had in their initial discussions naively
imagined the Electronic Beowulf as a series of straightforward
digital images of the manuscript which would have been relatively
straightforward to complete, taking perhaps no more than the three
weeks or so required for the recent CD-ROM of the Exeter Book.
Kiernan's more profound knowledge of the history of the Beowulf
manuscript lead him to propose a much more challenging project,
but one which makes much more intelligent use of the technology.
He has sought to create an image edition which draws together
and juxtaposes all the primary evidence for the transmission of
Beowulf, and exposes the different layers of evidence on
which the received text depends. The result could perhaps be described
as a diplomatic edition done with pictures rather than words,
but even this does not convey the radical nature of the edition.
Conventional editions are interpretations of a manuscript text
by an editor, designed to convert manuscript sources into print
media. Thus, for Beowulf, the standard editions include
many corrections and emendments, some of an extremely subjective
character, which editors feel are necessary to produce a readable
text. In order to help establish the origins of the text, Kiernan
had in 1981 called for the production of a 'new, truly conservative
edition', purged of such corrections (Kiernan, 1981, p. 278). He
will achieve this in the Electronic Beowulf in a way which
would perhaps have surprised him at the time he wrote his book.
The work in preparing this image edition has been more complex
than that normally associated with a conventional facsimile or
text edition. Not only have there been the inevitable difficulties
associated with the use of any new technology, such as managing
the transfer across large distances of huge quantities of data
or moving 24-bit colour images across different technical platforms,
but it has been necessary to devise innovative technical solutions
to achieve the desired end result. At all stages, Kiernan has
taken the lead in determining the technical approach of the project
-- for example, he identified the camera used in the project and
proposed the solution to the difficult problem of providing a
suitable front end. As editor, he has had not only to identify
and sort the hundreds of different images used in the project,
but also create the HTML which links them together. Since this
is a new type of edition, it has required a new type of editor.
Moreover, although the final result reflects one man's vision
of the manuscript, the creation of it has required a new type
of collaboration between scholar, curator, conservator, photographer
and technical expert.
The project was financed as part of the British Library's Initiatives
for Access programme. This provided finance for image capture
equipment at the British Library and also paid for staff time
on the project, in particular providing the services of a professional
project manager, John Bennett of Strategic Information Management,
to supervise the development of the technical infrastructure at
the British end. In America, the University of Kentucky provided
a massive HP Unix Workstation for editorial work, gave access
to its Convex mass storage system for archiving data, and provided
technical assistance. A summer stipend from the National Endowment
for the Humanities helped finance Professor Kiernan's travel costs,
and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation also gave a grant to Professor
Kiernan to allow him to spend a year working on the edition -- as with all such projects, the most precious resource has been
time.
In order to facilitate image processing work and to allow the
use of special lighting effects, it was felt that any imaging
process which required the scanning of photographic media would
be unsuitable for this project. On conservation grounds, it was
not acceptable that the manuscript should come in direct contact
with the scanning device. Any digital camera used in the project
would need to offer good quality colour combined with high resolution
and ease of use. At Professor Kiernan's suggestion, the ProgRes
3012 camera, manufactured by a German medical imaging company,
Kontron, was used. The camera perfectly met our criteria by offering
images at 3096 x 2320 pixels (an upgrade offering 4490 x 3480
pixels is now available) with full 24-bit colour. It had an on-screen
focussing facility, which few systems at that time offered. A
separate feed to a black and white monitor was also available,
which proved invaluable in setting up shots with fibre-optic light.
The technical features of this camera are described in detail
by Peter Robinson in his book on The Digitization of Primary
Textual Sources (1993, pp. 45-7), so suffice it to say here
that the camera has proved the most reliable and versatile of
the pieces of equipment used in the project. The main difficulty
has been lighting. David Cooper has already described the problems
involved with trying to use cold light with the Kontron camera.
The approach in the British Library has been to use photo-flood
and latterly halogen lights, on the grounds that the lux exposure
was broadly comparable to that used for video filming and acceptable
for a one-off project unlikely to be repeated in the near future.
However, in order to ensure that the heat of the lights does not
cause any harm to the manuscript, all photography has taken place
under the supervision of both a conservator and curator. The temperature
during shooting has been carefully monitored, and both manuscript
and equipment frequently rested. As a result of these necessary
restrictions, the digitization process has been relatively slow
and expensive. We have had to focus very much on assembling the
materials for the Beowulf project, and have not been able
to draw together as large a collection of digital images as has
been possible for the Oxford project.
The Kontron camera was used at the British Library on a PC platform,
initially Windows 3.1, then Windows 3.11. This was a purely pragmatic
decision. Support for Unix and Mac in the British Library was
at that time very limited, and it seemed that it would be difficult
to get the project off the ground if one of these platforms was
used. This has created a number of problems. The DOS/Windows architecture
was ill-suited to handling the large 21 MB image files produced
by the Kontron camera, and the large 486 and latterly Pentium
machines used to take and manipulate the images proved very unstable
and unreliable. Another problem was colour. The PCs produced beautiful
images, but did not display the full 24 bits. It seemed to miss
the point to say that, to see the image at its best, one needed
to take a plane to Kentucky and view it on Kevin Kiernan's Unix
workstation. Although this was frustrating, it was not at first
a serious problem. However, as the software available to take
images on the PC improved and 32-bit emulators for the PC became
available, the colour of the image became distorted when it was
transferred to other platforms. This has been a considerable obstacle
for the project in its latter stages. By contrast, the Unix and
Mac machines used in Kentucky have been much more reliable in
their handling of the image files. If I was to make one change
in the way the project has been organised, it would have been
to try operating the camera in London on Unix or Mac machines.
The question of the storage of the large quantities of data produced
by the camera when working at full capacity has also been a major
issue. The scan time of the camera working on a Pentium machine
under Windows 3.1 is 15 seconds (this is considerably reduced
when Windows NT or Windows 95 is used). This means that the speed
of scanning can potentially rival microfilm, but something has
to be done with the data -- over two gigabytes can be produced in
a normal working day. The Library does not possess its own mass
storage system for this quantity of data. Initially, it was felt
that the best solution was off-line backup onto DAT. This offers
large amounts of storage very cheaply -- in 1993, two gigabytes for
less than twenty pounds. However, the backup procedure was extremely
time-consuming, and the tapes needed regular checking to ensure
that the data could still be read. Moreover, the files had to
be transferred to Kentucky. The proprietary DOS software used
in the British Library for backup could not be run on the Unix
machines in America. Although a tar utility eventually made the
transfer easier, the cheapness of the DAT proved to be a false
economy. The length of time spent in maintaining and recovering
data from the DAT wiped out savings achieved through the cheapness
of the tape.
It was observed to me in a seminar in 1994 that these problems
were not so much ones of storage as of bandwidth, and indeed they
eased as the capacity of networks improved. When the high speed
SuperJanet link became available within Britain, images could
be transferred to to the large scale storage facility at the University
of London Computing Centre. This has proved a more effective method
of archiving shots as they are taken, but the time taken in transferring
images is still much greater than that required to shoot them.
>From ULCC, it has proved possible to transfer images by FTP to
Kentucky, and this is currently the normal means of transfer.
Network links are still, however, not as reliable or as speedy
as one might like, and it is possible that the use of a CD writer
or external drive might provide a better solution of these issues.
This gives some idea of the technical infrastructure. But what
does the Electronic Beowulf consist of? The first level
comprises colour images under normal lighting conditions of the
whole of Vitellius A.xv, providing the first facsimile of the
complete volume and the first colour facsimile of the Nowell Codex.
The resolution of the images varies depending on the exact distance
of the camera from the surface of the manuscript, but generally
they are in excess of 300 dpi. The colour images are already a
considerable advance on the existing black and white facsimiles.
Words and letters running into repairs on the edge of the folio
can be read in the colour facsimile which cannot be made out in
black and white. Kevin Kiernan has given a striking example of
the value of colour images in the three lines at the top of folio
180 (183 according to the British Library foliation), which look
in black and white as if they are simply indistinct as a result
of the general damage to the manuscript. In colour, however, it
seems as if these lines have been deliberately erased by the scribe
(a point only previously noticed by Thorkelin) (Kiernan 1994;
cf. Kiernan 1981, pp. 245-50).
However, if the aim had merely been to produce a colour facsimile,
it would have been easier to do it by conventional means. The
colour digital images are merely the starting point. We hope that
they will provide the raw material for digital image processing
of damaged or obscure text, but have not had the chance to make
much progress with this ourselves yet. The images can be magnified
to examine physical details of the manuscript or details of scribal
technique. Different parts of the manuscript can be compared side
by side. Users can rearrange the manuscript into different collations
to test rival theories about its structure.
The manuscript alone, however, does not tell the story of the
Beowulf text. In a digital environment, it is possible
to place side by side documents which are widely dispersed. This
sounds fine in theory, and an obvious application of this technology
is the reintegration of membra disiecta. One of our primary
aims was to provide images of the Thorkelin transcripts, which
had not been seen side by side with the Beowulf manuscript
since they were sent by special railway delivery to the British
Museum for Zupitza to use them in 1880 (British Library, Department
of Manuscripts archives). The practical issues involved in realising
this aspiration were, however, considerable, since it required
the transportation of the camera, PC, monitors, lights and other
equipments to Copenhagen. This was a considerable logistical exercise,
similar to transporting a film crew. The excess baggage bill alone
was enormous. The Royal Library at Copenhagen were very accommodating
hosts and staff there responded enthusiastically to the opportunity
to see this technology at work at first hand, even when the two
2KW photo-flood lights blew out the electrical circuits in the
area where scanning was taking place.
We had initially assumed that, for modern transcripts, scans at
a lower resolution than that used for the Beowulf manuscript
would be acceptable, but as scanning progressed it became evident
that full resolution shots were also required of the Thorkelin
transcripts. Where these transcripts record letters that have
since disappeared, minor details such as erasures, corrections
and alterations can be just as important for determining particular
readings as in medieval manuscripts. Working under the supervision
of Professor Kiernan, David French, the Library conservator who
has provided much of the technical support for the project, completed
the scanning not only of both sets of transcripts but also of
important ancillary material in the Royal Library and the Danish
national archives.
As has been seen, Thorkelin's edition prompted a much closer examination
of the Beowulf manuscript. This was frequently recorded
in the form of corrections to Thorkelin's printed edition. The
first such collation was made by John Conybeare in 1817. He makes
many corrections to Thorkelin's text, which again are of great
importance where letters have disappeared from the original manuscript.
He also noted where text had been lost from the manuscript since
Thorkelin had used it, indicating this by underscoring the relevant
section of the edition with small dots. His collation thus is
also an important witness to the deterioration of the manuscript
at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries.
Conybeare's collation was owned by Professor Whitney Bolton of
Rutgers University, who described it in an article for English
Studies in 1974 (Bolton 1974). In order to facilitate the
scanning of Conybeare's collation for the Electronic Beowulf
archive, Professor Bolton very generously presented the volume
to the British Library, where it is now Additional Manuscript
71716. This was an exceptionally generous gesture and an unexpected
and very concrete bonus for the Library from the project. Conybeare's
collation was also scanned at full resolution for the burgeoning
electronic archive.
A more accurate collation of Beowulf was also made in 1824
by the future Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum and
restorer of the manuscript, Frederic Madden. This is prefaced
by an eerily realistic drawing of the first page of the poem,
the only extant representation of the manuscript before its restoration
in 1845. Madden's collation was lot 293 in the sale of his library
at Sotheby's on 7 August 1873 and is now in the Houghton Library
at Harvard University (Houghton Library, 28286.24.3; Kiernan,
1997). Scanning of this collation required another off-site
shoot, the costs of which were met by the University of Kansas
and Harvard University, both of which were anxious to see demonstrations
of the camera. The organisation of this shoot was simpler than
with Copenhagen -- the components of the PC used for image capture
were transferred to a small tower which could be managed by one
person, while lights, monitors and other standard equipment were
hired in the United States. However, rough handling of the PC
during the flight meant that it had to be virtually rebuilt in
the United States with the assistance of technicians from the
University of Kansas. Despite this crisis, however, the shoot
was completed successfully, although it seems at the time of writing
that the use of the latest Adobe Photoshop plug-in for the camera
on a Windows 95 platform may have created some problems with the
colour on these images when viewed on Unix or Mac machines.
By providing straight shots of Vitellius A.xv, the Thorkelin transcripts
and the Conybeare and Madden collations, the Electronic Beowulf
will provide the user with all the extant manuscript evidence
for the history of Beowulf. A user will not only have at
his or her fingertips all the key evidence for the history of
this text but will also be able to juxtapose them in ways which
would be impossible even if all the volumes were assembled in
one room. This already at one level represents a kind of restoration
of the damaged manuscript, in that it enables the user to reconstruct
text lost as a result of the fire damage and potentially get some
idea of the structure of the manuscript before the fire. By facilitating
comparison between the Thorkelin transcripts and the original
manuscript, the user can see at a glance how far the original
condition of the manuscript has changed. For example, the first
folio of the poem in the original manuscript is badly rubbed and
worn in the bottom right hand corner. This looks at first sight
as if it is the result of over-use of the manuscript in recent
years, but comparison with the Thorkelin transcripts shows that
its condition was equally bad in the 1780s.
However, the digital restoration of the Electronic Beowulf
goes further than this, and it is really in this kind of work
that the digital technology permits new approaches to the manuscript
which would not be possible in any other medium. It has been known
for many years that ultra-violet light allows faded and damaged
parts of the text to be more easily read. The 1959 version of
Zupitza's photographic facsimile of the manuscript incorporated
a number of ultra-violet photographs. Unfortunately, it was not
apparently practicable for the facsimile to offer both ultra-violet
photographs and pictures made under normal light. The choice of
which pages were reproduced under ultra-violet light was apparently
made by the Museum's photographer, and not the editors of the
volume. In an electronic facsimile, one need not be restricted
to one or the other -- both types of images can be readily made
available and the choice left to the user.
Moreover, the digital camera allows ultra-violet images of the
manuscript to be made more easily. Conventional ultra-violet photography
is very time-consuming and expensive, because of the long exposure
times required, characteristically fifteen to twenty minutes for
each shot. This is potentially hazardous for both the photographer
and the manuscript. It was found that very good ultra-violet shots
could be made with the Kontron camera in the normal fifteen-second
scan time. The essential prerequisites were powerful ultra-violet
lights and the careful recalibration of the camera under ultra-violet
light. Because the Kontron only takes colour shots, the result
can often be at first only a murky blue patch, but adjustment
of contrast and brightness and transfer of the image to grey-scale
will cause a very good ultra-violet image to appear. This opens
up the prospect of large-scale ultra-violet photography of the
burnt Cotton manuscripts. Many of the most badly damaged manuscripts,
which under normal light look like burnt toast, can in fact be
easily read under a light source giving a combination of ultra-violet
and blue light, but the cost of conventional ultra-violet light
has meant that it is impracticable to undertake substantial ultra-violet
photography of the collection. With a digital camera, it becomes
a more practicable possibility.
The Kontron camera similarly provides good images under infra-red
light, but this requires the removal of an infra-red filter within
the camera. Although infra-red light is of little value in making
out damaged sections of the Beowulf manuscript, this technique
may prove to be of value with other categories of material.
The heart of the project however has been our 'backlit' shots
- images of the letters concealed by Gough's paper frames. As
has been noted, although these letters can be made out with the
aid of a fibre-optic cable held behind the paper frame, it is
difficult to make them out even with the naked eye and impossible
to make a picture of them with a conventional camera. The advantage
of the digital camera is that it is possible to see the digital
image in a matter of seconds and establish whether or not the
elusive letter has been recorded. It took some time to work out
the best method of obtaining these shots. An experiment was made
with a flat A4-size fibre-optic pad to see if this would provide
a kind of x-ray image of the hidden letters, but the light source
was not sufficiently powerful to provide a clear image. Attempts
were also made to illuminate whole sections of concealed text,
but this also proved unsatisfactory. In the end, it was found
that the best method was to clamp the fibre-optic cable into position
just behind the folio, illuminating two or three letters at a
time. Checking the readings and setting up the shots was extremely
demanding, and could not have been accomplished if it had not
taken place under the immediate supervision of Professor Kiernan.
Many hundreds of such concealed letters have now been shot, covering
not only the Beowulf poem but also the whole of the Nowell
Codex. Already, images of fibre-optic letters have been used by
Professor Kiernan to help correct entries for the Dictionary of
Old English.
It would not have been possible to record these hidden letters
without a digital camera, but having them in digital form of
course then makes it possible to do other things with them. At
a simple level, the hidden letters can be pasted back into their
appropriate place in a digital image of the whole folio, thus
recapturing something of the appearance of the manuscript prior
to Gough's restoration. In this way, the process of creating the
digital facsimile becomes an extension of the process begun by
Gough of conserving and restoring the fire-damaged manuscript,
but one performed without direct intervention on the manuscript
itself.
This does not exhaust all the levels of the Electronic Beowulf.
Although at the heart of the project is the idea that editions
should now be done with images not text, and the perception that
text is (for the medieval period at least) image, it is recognised
that some users may prefer to work with a transcription of the
poem. This will therefore be provided, with full SGML tagging,
as well as a translation. Links will be provided from the text
to show supporting evidence for particular readings. There will
also be a glossary.
Knitting together the many different layers of the Electronic
Beowulf proved to be no easy problem. The idea was to give
the user hyperlinks between each different level of the images.
The user would be able to click on the appropriate part of an
image of a folio from the original manuscript and be able to see
hidden letters and ultra-violet readings in their appropriate
place. With a further click, he or she would be able to call up
images of the relevant sections of the Thorkelin transcripts or
Conybeare or Madden collations. We were anxious that the package
would be available for Unix, Mac and PC platforms. A Unix programme
allowing users to use the images in this way was developed under
the supervision of Professor Kiernan at Kentucky in 1993. A version
of this programme was also developed for Mac users, called MacBeowulf,
which worked very well, but the creation of a PC version proved
problematic, because it was difficult to create a programme which
would perform reliably on all the different flavours of PC available.
Moreover, it was not clear how this software would be supported.
Worst of all, it seemed likely that the editorial work would have
to be done three times over, once for each version of the CD.
While the issues associated with this development work were being
investigated, the network browsers had made great strides forward.
Netscape version 2.0 for the first time offered the ability to
display frames containing different images side by side, precisely
how we wanted to display the Beowulf materials. With the development
of the Java programming language, it also became possible to develop
tools which would help the user of the images, such as a tool
for zooming in on different parts of the manuscript. The browsers
in fact offered all the functionality that was required for the
Electronic Beowulf. The only problem was that the networks
did not have the capacity to handle very smoothly the large image
files, even when in a compressed JPEG format. In fact, even though
the image files will be distributed as JPEGs, it will be difficult
to fit them all on two CDs. However, the network browsers not
only read networked files but also files held on a local disc.
So the final CD-ROM will use Netscape 3.00 as a front end to read
HTML files and images held on a local CD -- the kind of hybrid
approach which is likely to be increasingly common until network
capacities are substantially increased. This offers a number of
advantages. The materials on the CD-ROM will essentially be independent
of the software -- the prototype package works under both Internet
Explorer and Netscape. It will also be very simple to make the
package available on the Internet when network speeds improve.
The CD-ROM is currently scheduled for publication in the summer
of 1997.
IV.
Most of the arguments in favour of the digitization of manuscript
materials have been framed in terms of increasing access. Digitization
is seen by some commentators as providing a kind of superior microfilm
which will be available to anyone who has a modem. The practical
difficulties raised by these kind of assumptions are beginning
to emerge as we come to terms with the technology. The premise
has, of course, always been that digital images will be free or
at least very cheap. This is a false impression created by the
fact that governments and other bodies are at present willing
to fund digital projects to keep their researchers in the technical
vanguard. As programmes for digitization start to have to recover
their costs, the free ride will come to an end, and it is by no
means clear at present that libraries will be able to provide
digital images as cheaply as microfilm or indeed photography.
Although the speed of capture of digital images can bear comparison
with microfilming, the post-processing and storage costs can be
much greater. At the moment, the costs of network access are borne
by academic institutions, but this may not continue to be the
case in the future. Already, it sounds as if the costs of access
to the broad-band successors to the Internet may be prohibitively
expensive for some institutions.
Against this background, it is perhaps worth starting to consider
what digital technology can do that other media cannot. The Electronic
Beowulf provides a powerful demonstration of the way in which
a digital imaging project can produce research information of
fundamental value which could not be assembled in any other way.
It offers more than access, since the user will have more information
about the text available to him than if he was sitting in the
British Library with the manuscript itself in front of him. Kevin
Kiernan has called this approach 'digital preservation', and at
one level this is an accurate description, since the digital images
will preserve information about the manuscript (such as the hidden
letters) which it may be difficult to preserve in future years.
However, as has been seen, this approach goes beyond simple preservation
of information about the manuscript towards the active recreation
of previous states of the manuscript. This is a direct extension
of the activities of Gough, Madden and others in restoring the
damaged manuscript, and may perhaps be described as 'digital restoration'
(Kiernan 1994).
It may seem that the approach described here is only really applicable
to Beowulf, but Vitellius A.xv was only one of more than
a hundred manuscripts badly damaged in the Cotton fire, all of
which were conserved using similar methods to those in Vitellius
A.xv. These include a number of manuscripts of great importance
for early English literature and history which have not been very
carefully studied. A programme to apply the techniques used in
the Electronic Beowulf to all these manuscripts would occupy
many lifetimes, but would perhaps finally realise the vision of
Sir Frederic Madden of the perfect restoration of this great library.
One obvious candidate for such treatment would be Sir Robert Cotton's
pride and joy, the Cotton Genesis, Otho B.vi, a Byzantine manuscript
dating from the sixth century and one of the earliest illustrated
Christian manuscripts, which was reduced to a pile of cinders
in the fire. The illustrations of this manuscript are now shrunken,
warped and cracked, and attempts to reconstruct their original
appearance have had to rely on poor quality photographs or artists'
impressions. Digitally aided 'restoration' of some of these illustrations
is a simple proposition, and an obvious area for further experimentation.
Already, Kevin Kiernan has applied ultra-violet imaging to Otho
B.x, an important manuscript of Ćlfric which was very badly
burnt in the Cotton fire and was inaccurately pieced together
by one of Madden's assistants, N.E.S.A. Hamilton. Similar experiments
have also been made by him with Otho A.vi, the only known manuscript
of the prosimetrical Alfredian translation of Boethius (Kiernan
1997). He has shown how the use of imaging can help
reconstruct an Old English fragment at the University of Kansas.
In this case, the fragment was used as a pastedown. When the fragment
was removed from the cover, part of the text adhered to the cover.
Using digital images, Kiernan was able to reintegrate the offset
and the fragment. Another dramatic illustration has been the use
of the 'Remove Dust and Scratches' setting in Adobe Photoshop
to improve the legibility of a badly burnt fragment in a Cotton
manuscript which had had gauze stuck on it in the 1950s.
Of course, much of this work is experimental, and is not always
successful. Cotton owned two of the original letters patent of
1215 by which Magna Carta was promulgated. One of these, now Cotton
Charter xiii.31a, was the only such charter with King John's Great
Seal still attached. However, it was damaged in the fire of 1731
and the great seal reduced to a shapeless blob. The charter was
further damaged by heavy-handed conservation work in 1834, and
is now largely illegible (Prescott, 1997). We attempted to apply
some of the ultra-violet and backlighting techniques used on Beowulf
to this manuscript, but it appears that chemicals were applied
to the surface of the document, perhaps during the 1834 conservation
work, and, despite processing of the images, little could be recovered.
However, more sophisticated image processing techniques may yet
perhaps allow greater success in recovering this document.
In developing such techniques further, humanities computing will
start to make novel and complex demands on computing technology.
This indicates the need for closer collaboration with computer
scientists and other disciplines. In recognition of this, an inter-disciplinary
group was formed at the University of Kentucky called GRENDL (Group
for Research into Electronically Networked Digital Libraries).
A major symposium was organised at Lexington in November 1995
to discuss the ways in which humanities research can present technically
challenging problems for computer science. The theme of the conference
was 'Reconnecting Science and the Humanities through Digital Libraries',
and this is perhaps no naive hope. The possibilities offered by
digital restoration may yet bear larger and more unexpected fruit
than have hitherto been imagined.
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