WP10 Retina

Abstract

WP10, ReTINA, aims to provide a RESILIENCE component dedicated to the production and use of digital archives that collect complex, rare and/or endangered religious texts written in various media (stone, papyrus, etc.) from the Nile Valley and beyond. The goal of WP10 is to create an environment that, first, defines and optimizes procedures for digitizing and digitally archiving a heterogeneous set of sources; second, designs services that can support scholars in researching and interpreting this corpus of ancient texts dispersed in different digital archives; and third, provides guidelines for subsequent digital conversion of texts and/or images found in different media.

Staffing

The WP is coordinated by Andrea D’Andrea. The staff includes Alexia Pavan (RTDA), Gilda Ferrandino (Technologist), Tarik Ranieri (PhD student)

Steps

• Conduct a preliminary analysis on digital archives on ancient religious content describing projects, schemas, metadata and taxonomies used for the development of ReTINA.
• Identify a preliminary data-model which contain the schema for encoding texts and manuscripts according to Open Science principles, accounting for the different supports and for the specificities due to the religious nature of the texts.
• Prepare a digital dataset that can be used for test.
• Validate a preliminary data-model.
• Describe the procedures to digitize texts and manuscripts and to enrich the digitization with 3D data and other analysis.
• Design a prototype for annotating texts and manuscripts for archiving and visualizing the resources.
• Prepare ReTINA for publication to RESILIENCE marketplace.

Outcomes

• Review the state of the art in the field of study by analyzing digital archives containing religious texts from different times, regions, languages, and media.
• Development of common guidelines for digitization and digital archiving by optimizing existing data models.
• Design a software prototype for text annotation and visualization.