VisColl and the Virtual Book Object: Rethinking Manuscript Collation in Digital Space

Abstract

In this HERMES Open Colloquium session Dr. Suzette van Haaren is talking about “VisColl and the virtual book object: rethinking manuscript collation in digital space”. Digitising medieval manuscripts inevitably fragments their material integrity: while high-resolution images and metadata capture some aspects of the book, they often fail to convey its physical structure. One of the most challenging aspects to represent digitally is collation — the gathering and arrangement of quires that define a codex. Understanding a manuscript’s collation can be very important for studying its production, history, and use. VisColl, developed at the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, provides a powerful digital framework to model and visualise collation structures. Through its implementation in the VCEditor, users can generate structured collation models, incorporating metadata and annotations that transform traditional manuscript descriptions into interactive, virtual research objects.