Digital Skin I: Beyond the Archive: Communicating Manuscript Materiality via Social Media (A Roundtable)
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Information Studies (HATII), Univ. of Glasgow
Organizer Name
Johanna Green
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of Glasgow
Presider Name
Diane G. Scott
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of Glasgow
Paper Title 1
Discussant
Presenter 1 Name
Johanna Green
Paper Title 2
Discussant
Presenter 2 Name
Alexandra K. Newman
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History, Smithsonian Libraries
Paper Title 3
Discussant
Presenter 3 Name
Colleen Theisen
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of Iowa Libraries
Paper Title 4
Discussant
Presenter 4 Name
Laura E. Aydelotte
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Princeton Univ. Library
Start Date
12-5-2018 1:30 PM
Session Location
Schneider 1345
Description
Public access to written heritage, here with a focus on medieval manuscripts, presents innumerable challenges, whether this access is via the exhibition space, or digitally via a digital manuscript viewer, and both involve material losses of some kind. Once immobile behind glass, or even once partially disembodied as digital pages, manuscripts are transformed from sensory, material, text technologies into fixed or partially-fixed exhibits. As Loxley et al. point out in their 2011 study of the exhibition of the written word, ‘words are not normally uttered, written or printed with the intention that they should end up in a glass case […] reading, in all its different forms, is […] a fundamentally different activity to that of viewing an object in a museum or a gallery’. (Loxley et al., 2011: 6)
This roundtable therefore seeks to examine the role of social media in i) unlocking the archive for public audiences and ii) in communicating aspects of manuscript materiality often lost in traditional physical exhibitions of manuscripts or via the experience of using digital manuscript viewers. In so doing, it seeks to evaluate the value of social media beyond mere “edutainment” and questions – in the absence of manuscript handling opportunities for many members of the public – if social media can provide a meaningful, alternative, digital “hands-on” with manuscripts as lived objects rather than disembodied pages.
Loxley, J., Marshall, J., Otty, L., Vincent, H. 2011. Exhibiting the Written Word. Edinburgh. <http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/research-activities/recent-research-and-activities/exhibiting-written-word> [Date of Access: 01.06.2017].
Digital Skin I: Beyond the Archive: Communicating Manuscript Materiality via Social Media (A Roundtable)
Schneider 1345
Public access to written heritage, here with a focus on medieval manuscripts, presents innumerable challenges, whether this access is via the exhibition space, or digitally via a digital manuscript viewer, and both involve material losses of some kind. Once immobile behind glass, or even once partially disembodied as digital pages, manuscripts are transformed from sensory, material, text technologies into fixed or partially-fixed exhibits. As Loxley et al. point out in their 2011 study of the exhibition of the written word, ‘words are not normally uttered, written or printed with the intention that they should end up in a glass case […] reading, in all its different forms, is […] a fundamentally different activity to that of viewing an object in a museum or a gallery’. (Loxley et al., 2011: 6)
This roundtable therefore seeks to examine the role of social media in i) unlocking the archive for public audiences and ii) in communicating aspects of manuscript materiality often lost in traditional physical exhibitions of manuscripts or via the experience of using digital manuscript viewers. In so doing, it seeks to evaluate the value of social media beyond mere “edutainment” and questions – in the absence of manuscript handling opportunities for many members of the public – if social media can provide a meaningful, alternative, digital “hands-on” with manuscripts as lived objects rather than disembodied pages.
Loxley, J., Marshall, J., Otty, L., Vincent, H. 2011. Exhibiting the Written Word. Edinburgh. <http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/research-activities/recent-research-and-activities/exhibiting-written-word> [Date of Access: 01.06.2017].