Author: digitalmedievalistnews

New Bownde: New Scholarship in Early Modern Binding Folger Shakespeare Library, 15-€“16 August 2013

digitalmedievalistnews

The Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, D.C.) hosts a two-day, international conference to explore new tools for the study of English and Continental bookbinding and share new scholarship in the materiality of the book. Fifteen scholars from seven countries present papers on different aspects of bookbindings, and four international experts conduct workshops exploring new tools and instruments for the study of early modern bindings.

New Bownde: New Scholarship in Early Modern Binding marks the culmination of a two-year project to build an online database of binding images from the Folger collection.
The conference is preceded by a unique, free of charge workshop on Wednesday 14 August 2013 about “digital rubbings” of early modern bookbindings.

See the program on http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=4498

For more information or questions, please contact Goran Proot, gproot@folger.edu or 202-675 0356 (office hours)

Posted by: Timoty Leonardi (timoty.leonardi@tesorodelduomovc.it).

6a giornata nazionale per lo studio multidisciplinare dei manoscritti miniati

digitalmedievalistnews

Codici miniati: incontro tra Arte e Scienza
6° giornata nazionale per lo studio multidisciplinare dei manoscritti miniati In codicibus cooperiendis doctos artifices. Materiali e tecniche della legatura

Venerdì 21 giugno 2013
Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense – Sala Maria Teresa
Via Brera, 28 – Milano

PROGRAMMA
9.30 Saluto del direttore Andrea De Pasquale

9.45 I sessione – La legatura: uno sguardo d’insieme

Giusi Zanichelli (Università degli Studi di Salerno): Visualizzare il codice: il ruolo della legatura nel sistema delle immagini

Frédéric Tixier (Ecole du Louvre, Paris): Les plaques de reliure en Opus Lemovicense: typologies, usages et collections

Franca Alloatti (Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense di Milano): Carte decorate nella legatura

Andrea De Pasquale (Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense di Milano, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino): Le legature editoriali

11.25 Coffee break

11.35 II sessione – Casi di studio

Timoty Leonardi (Biblioteca Capitolare di Vercelli): Legami tra cartolai e istituzioni locali: riuso di manoscritti smembrati a Vercelli

Saverio Lomartire (Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale): Legature preziose nel Museo del Tesoro del Duomo di Vercelli

Chiara Maggioni (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore): La Pace di Chiavenna

12.50 Buffet

Paola Venturelli (Museo Gonzaga di Mantova): L’evangeliario di Ariberto di Intimiano

Federico Macchi (bibliofilo): Biblioteca Palatina di Parma – Il censimento delle legature storiche – Sorprese e curiosità

14.50 III sessione – Indagini diagnostiche

Angelo Agostino (Università degli Studi di Torino): Metalli nobili sulle legature di Chiavenna, Milano e Vercelli

Gaia Fenoglio (Università degli Studi di Torino): Smalti e vetri sulle legature di Chiavenna, Milano e Vercelli

15.40 Coffee break

Maurizio Aceto (Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale): Gli adesivi delle legature di Chiavenna e Vercelli

Pietro Baraldi (Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia: Le placche in avorio dei codici antichi: colori e dorature

16.40 Conclusione dei lavori

La partecipazione al seminario è gratuita. Per l’iscrizione compilare il modulo online al sito web http://www.arc.unito.it. È prevista la pubblicazione online degli atti con accesso libero.
A richiesta, gli studenti e dottorandi di ricerca dei Corsi di Laurea in Scienze dei Beni Culturali o affini potranno ricevere un attestato di frequenza alla giornata da presentare alle loro Università per il rilascio di crediti formativi.

Per informazioni contattare:
Dott. Maurizio Aceto
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale
Viale T. Michel, 11 – 15121 Alessandria
Tel. 0131 360265
maurizio.aceto@mfn.unipmn.it

Posted by: Timoty Leonardi (timoty.leonardi@tesorodelduomovc.it).

Call For Nominees: DM Board

digitalmedievalistnews

Dear colleagues,

Digital Medievalist will be holding elections at the end of June for four positions to its Executive Board. Board positions are for two year terms and incumbents may be re-elected (for a maximum of three terms in a row). Members of the Board are responsible for the overall direction of the organisation and leading the Digital Medievalist’s many projects and programmes. This is a working board, and so it would be expected that you are willing and able to commit a little bit of time to helping Digital Medievalist undertake some of its activities (such as helping to run its its journal, conference sessions, etc.). For further information about the Executive and Digital Medievalist more generally please see the DM website, particularly:

– http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/about.html
– http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/bylaws.html

We are now seeking nominations (including self-nominations) for the annual elections. In order to be eligible for election, candidates must be members of Digital Medievalist (membership is conferred simply by subscription to the organisation’s mailing list, dm-l) and have made some demonstrable contribution either to the DM project (e.g. to the mailing list, or the wiki, etc.), or generally to the field of digital medieval studies.

If you are interested in running for these positions or are able to recommend a suitable candidate, please contact the returning officers, Orietta Da Rold (odr1@leicester.ac.uk) and Takako Kato (TakakoKato123@gmail.com) who will treat your nomination or enquiries in confidence. The nomination period will close at 0000 UTC on Tuesday June 19 and elections will be held by electronic ballot through the whole of the week starting 28 June, 2013.

Best wishes,

Orietta and Takako

Posted by: Takako Kato (TakakoKato123@gmail.com).

Digital Classicist seminar

digitalmedievalistnews

The first of this Summer’s Digital Classicist & Institute of Classical Studies seminars is this Friday.

Tom Brughmans (University of Southampton)
‘Exploring visibility networks in Iron Age and Roman Southern Spain with Exponential Random Graph Models’

Friday June 7 at 16:30
Room G37, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU

Are lines of sight between Roman towns important for explaining their location? Through a case study on visibility patterns between urban settlements in Iron Age and Roman Southern Spain, this paper will discuss how Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) can help explore hypothetical past processes of interaction and site location. With these models the frequency of certain subnetworks in random networks and the empirically attested network is compared, to examine the probability that the subnetworks might have emerged through random processes. This paper will critically evaluate the potential and limitations of such an approach for archaeology.

The seminar will be followed by wine and refreshments.

All are welcome.

The full 2013 programme is at http://digiclass.cch.kcl.ac.uk/wip/wip2013.html

Posted by: Simon Mahony (s.mahony@ucl.ac.uk).

PhD thesis offer in graphical pattern spotting in historical documents

digitalmedievalistnews

PhD studentship – Automatic graphical pattern spotting in historical documents starting September 2013

The aim of this thesis is to develop robust pattern spotting techniques for historical document images (medieval manuscripts or other types of old documents containing graphical parts, such as ornamental background or decorative letters). Pattern spotting consists in searching in a document image for occurrences of a graphical “object”, i.e. a pattern more or less complex such as a logo, a signature, a medieval letter, a symbol, a coast of arms, etc. The query is formulated by pointing in the image an example of the pattern to search for (image query). The interest of pattern spotting is to ease information indexation and retrieval in complex historical digitized documents such as medieval manuscripts for example. One efficient indexing method consists in describing the image using a bag of visual words, i.e. using a vector aggregating local descriptors according to a predefined vocabulary (codebook). Such a representation of the images is efficient for retrieving very la
rge image databases but spatial organization of the characteristics are lost. For pattern spotting in document images, this spatial organization is crucial, especially the spatial organization of colors in medieval illuminated manuscripts.
In this thesis, we wish to deeper explore the adaptation of the technique to the detection of patterns in document images such as medieval manuscripts. Our goal is to exploit color descriptors and the search for a sparse representation of visual word lexicon as well as integrating some mechanisms that enable to describe the spatial organization of the colors. The flexibility of the pattern spotting approach should eventually allow to generalize these works to the spotting of more complex objects like scenes in medieval manuscripts for instance.

About the LITIS Lab: The LITIS (Computer Science, information processing and systems) laboratory is the research unit in Communication and Information Sciences and Technologies of the Upper Normandy Region. Our lab gathers researchers from the three main Higher Education institutions of the region: Rouen University, Le Havre University and the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) of Rouen. The laboratory has 160 members, half of which are PhD students. The LITIS research topics cover a wide spectrum of Communication and Information Sciences and Technologies, from fundamental researches to applications, in particular to life sciences and humanities.

Candidate Profile: The PhD candidate should hold a Master of Science, in the field of computer science or computer engineering, with a major in signal and image processing. He/she should also have sound knowledge in pattern recognition (feature extraction, learning, and classification). Experience with document image analysis is an advantage.

If you are interested in applying for the position, please send a resume, a letter explaining why you are interested, transcripts of the candidate’s Master degrees, and the contacts of two references to: Laurent.Heutte@univ-rouen.fr, Stephane.Nicolas@univ-rouen.fr, Caroline.Petitjean@univ-rouen.fr Deadline: June 15th, 2013
Location : LITIS EA 4108, Université de Rouen, Technopole du Madrillet, 76821 Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, FRANCE
Advisoring : L. Heutte (Professeur), S. Nicolas (Maître de Conférences), C. Petitjean (Maître de Conférences)
Funding: The Upper Normandy Region offers a 3-year studentship of 1374,69 € per month (net income).

Posted by: Dr. NICOLAS Stéphane (stephane.nicolas@univ-rouen.fr).