Monday 13 October 2014

Working with the Great Parchment Book: Digitisation and Primary Historical Texts

Time and place
9.30 to 10.45am
31st October 2014
Linkway, 4th Floor John Medley Building, 
The University of Melbourne

DHI is very excited to host  a public Lecture by Professor Melissa Terras on the 31st October 2014.

Melissa will be discussing the Great Parchment Book of the Honourable The Irish Society, a major survey compiled in 1639 by a Commission instituted by Charles I, of all the estates in Derry, Northern Ireland, managed by the City of London through the Irish Society and the London livery companies. Damaged in a fire at London’s Guildhall in 1786, it has been unavailable to researchers for over 200 years. The manuscript consists of 165 separate parchment membranes, all damaged in the fire. Uneven shrinkage and distortion has rendered much of the text illegible. Traditional conservation alone would not produce sufficient results to make the manuscript accessible or suitable for exhibition, the parchment being too shriveled to be returned to a readable state. Much of the text is visible but distorted; following discussions with conservation and imaging experts, it was decided to flatten the parchment sheets as far as possible, and to use multi-modal digital imaging to gain legibility and enable digital access (http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/3-1/great-parchment-book-project/). 

This talk by Melissa Terras (one of the members of the GPB project) will look at issues involving using advanced imaging methods within cultural heritage, particularly regarding the relationship the resulting model has to the primary historical text. Using the Great Parchment Book as a focus, she will ask how best can we integrate multi-modal imaging into our humanities research practices? What issues are there for both research and practice?

Professor Melissa Terras is Director of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities at University College London. Her presentation will include an overview of the advanced imaging technologies used in projects such as the Great Parchment Book (http://www.greatparchmentbook.org/), and the virtual shipping gallery at the Science Museum in London.



Admission is free.
Bookings are required
Seating is limited
To register email:

For further information contact the Digital Humanities Incubator




Proudly Sponsored by:
Proudly Supported by:

No comments:

Post a Comment