Digitization in Bulgaria : A Look from Inside and Outside

1. Digitization in Bulgaria: A Look from Inside and Outside Dr. Milena Dobreva, Assoc. Prof.Institute of Mathematics and InformaticsSofia, Bulgaria Coordinator of KT-DigiCult-Bg project, FP6

2. Topics • The look from inside: Bulgarian experience • Mediaeval manuscripts • Virtual reality • The look from outside • EC priorities • DigiCult project Technology Watch Reports (www.digicult.info) • The KT-DigiCult-BG project

3. Are we similar? What is more likely you will find if you search the web for Portugal and Bulgaria? Not digitisation (yet!) Football!

4. Some comparison…

5. The View From Inside

6. Scope: Some Holdings in Bulgarian Repositories • 8500 Christian manuscripts + 4000 Islamic • More than 35000 early printed books • Third largest collection of epigraphic inscriptions in Latin and Ancient Greek in the world • Old Bulgarian runic inscriptions • … and numerous other

7. Why publish them in electronic form? • Access issues • Scattered collections • Preservation issues • Policy issues • What priorities to follow? • The challenges of the new media • How to present cultural heritage content?

8. Applications of IT to Mediaeval Bulgarian Manuscript Studies • First attempt: c. 1970, DBMS • Now (based on 90 publications)

9. Previous experience • Previous initiatives • Catalogues: ISIS, Repertorium, MASTER, XEditMan • Texts and images – isolated attempts • Electronic publications on CD-ROMs: Balkan manuscripts, Quran, Iconography; The Treasury of Lysimachos • Boyana church – 3D model

10. Boyana church – view from the outside

11. Boyana church – inner view

12. Manuscripts: Electronic Cataloguing • Example: TEI approach, MASTER project (2000) <marginalia> <p lang="ENG">Inscriptions in red or dark ink by the principal scribe Dobrejsho? On fol. 3r <q lang=" OBG ">åäå ïðîêëÿòà õàðòèà</q>; on fol. 16r <q lang="OBG">+ïðîñòè ìÿ ñòàià Áöå íåäîñòîèíà</q>;fol. 18v <q lang="OBG">äà çà÷íу ïî çäðàâîó ñòãî Èwàíà åó(ã)ëèñòà</q>;fol. 120v with red ink <q lang="OBG">ïðîñòè è ïîì(ë)îó ñòîû èwàíå iåó(ã)ëèñòå:</q>; on the same folio a later hand imitating the main scribe<q lang="CHU">Å(ä)ðåíå ïîïú Äîáðýøî</q>; by the same hand on fol. 18v<q lang="CHU">Åäðåíå</q>; fol. 5r later inscription in black ink <q lang="BUL">Ãîäèíà wò Õð. "ÀÑÊÀ" 1221</q>; another late inscription in blue ink on fol. 77v-78r<q lang="CHU">Èìåëú ñ÷àñòiå ÷èòàòü ñiþ êíèãY åó(ã)ëiå íàïðèñòîëíîå Ãðèãîðié Èâàíîâú Òóë÷àíñêîé Ç×S ãîäà Òóë÷à</q>; </p> </marginalia> Additional info: http://www.cta.dmu.ac.uk/projects/master/

13. Manuscripts: problems with Mediæval Text presentation • Approaches • Latin transliteration • WSD • Font and code tables problems -> UNICODE • Normalised texts • Super-, in-script and subscript letters; abbreviations, initials and other ornamentation

14. Manuscripts: images • Isolated example of digitized images (not supplied with texts): The Enina Apostle • 11 century (the oldest Bulgarian manuscript stored in Bulgaria) • 39 folios survived in a lime-pit, badly damaged

15. Presentation of images

16. Images

17. Conclusions • Scattered experience • No mass digitization • Pure cultural heritage institutions’ involvement

18. The View From Outside

19. European priorities • Expressed in Lund Principles: • making visible and accessible the digitised cultural and scientific heritage of Europe; • coordination of efforts; • development of a European view on policies and programmes, as well as of mechanisms to promote good practice in a consistent manner • Digitization itself is not supported

20. DigiCult Technology Watch Report 1 (S. Ross, M. Donnelly, M. Dobreva) • Customer Relationship Management • Digital Asset Management Systems • Smart Labels and Smart Tags • Virtual Reality and Display Technologies • Human Interfaces • Games Technologies

21. DigiCult Technology Watch Report 2 (S. Ross, M. Donnelly, M. Dobreva) • The Application Service Model • The XML Family of Technologies • Cultural Agents and Avatars • Mobile Access to Cultural Information Resources • Right Management and Payment Technologies • Collaborative Mechanisms and Technologies

22. Local specific features • European importance of collections……but they are not accessible in electronic form • Main experience in pre-digitisation work, such as cataloguing, and text encoding…… but mass digitisation never started anywhere • Digitisation work per se has not been done…… thus we do not match current EC priorities • No governmental programme (resp., funding)…… i.e. external financial support is needed It is not economically feasible separate cultural institutions to build their own digitisation units.

23. KT-DigiCult-BG project • Knowledge Transfer for Digitisation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage in Bulgaria • Starting in 2004, 4-years project, supported by FP6 • Phase 1: acquisition of knowledge • Phase 2: absorption of knowledge (visits to our institute)

24. Basic Fields of Work - 1 • General methodology and practical setting for digitisation of cultural and scientific heritage • Digitisation of mediaeval manuscripts (incl. digital imaging, cataloguing, text representation, electronic publishing) • Digitisation of mathematical texts and building digital mathematical library of works of Bulgarian mathematicians

25. Basic Fields of Work • Virtual reality applications for presentation of immovable cultural heritage. • Audio archives: methods for digitisation and restoration. • Application of quantitative methods for the study of data related to the cultural heritage. • Applications of edutainment to cultural heritage studies.

26. Conclusions • We hope that through the project we will raise the interest of scientific and cultural heritage institutions to start REAL work • Interested colleagues are welcome to contribute to our project • We are open for collaboration

27. Thank you for your attention!