Circular email 2019 June 20
From: Danica Summerlin <d.summerlin@sheffield.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2019 at 16:20 Subject: Clavis Canonum 2.0 -- update To: Christof Rolker <christof.rolker@uni-bamberg.de>, Clemens Radl <clemens.radl@mgh.de>
Dear all,
Hello once again, and a happy (almost-)summer to all. Now that our initial Gerda Henkel Stiftung grant is coming to an end, we’d like to update you all on how things are progressing with the Clavis project.
In January we had the third of our planned workshops, this time in Sheffield. Personally it was a joy to get some historians of canon law to my adopted home city; for the project, it made Christof, Clemens, and myself think deeply about how we see it in conjunction with other Digital Humanities and canon law projects. The most pertinent was a discussion of whether to stick with the incipit-explicit style of Clavis, or whether to expand into full text searches. As this emphasises the heart of the project – how far is Clavis a tool purely for linking canon law manuscripts, and how far should we see canon law material in a broader sense – it’s something that is forming the core of our current considerations of where we want the project to go. Answers on a postcard please.
More practically, we came away from the workshop with some major objectives.
1. At John Ott’s suggestion, we’re actively considering how to add YouTube video tutorials demonstrating how to use Clavis to the MGH website. The plan is to have one video, with voiceovers in English, German, French, and Italian. Duane Henderson, at the MGH, has also translated the German instructions on the Monumenta website into English - they're now live, alongside a few clarifications in the German text. We’re very grateful to Duane for doing this, and to Clemens for suggesting him.
2. We’re planning a Wiki of some form, although the exact details - especially of who will edit - are still in flux. We have to consider how to ensure connections with other projects (e.g. through embedded links), but we hope to have the basic structure up and running soon. At the Sheffield workshop, we also began early discussions on other ways of visualising the data; at the minute, this isn’t something that we will be actively pursuing, but the discussions were useful in terms of thinking about what else the data can be used for and therefore how we want to present the information.
3. We’re adding more collections to the database. Gratian is almost ready to go on, and to be followed by the Liber Extra and Corpus 442. We continue to be grateful to you all for the suggestions and the collections that you’re offering to us: it really is helping to make the database better. Our next move is to make sure that the early material is also represented, by adding collections from before 900.
4. The other major change that we’re considering (and I desperately want) is to include formal sources as well as material sources. Adding them in would involve some tech wizardry from Clemens, but as of a few weeks ago it's looking achievable in some shape or form. To advertise: this is probably what he'll be talking about in our Leeds session, so if you're around and want to know what's going on come along! If you're around but can't make it, then hopefully we'll see you in the bar at some point...
We have recently had some bad news, in that Gerda Henkel turned down our application for a 3-year grant. It's frustrating, but these things happen in the way of academic funding. All is not lost: I'm in the middle of drafting an application to a UK-based funder, and there is at least one other option that we're considering if that doesn't work out. We'll keep you posted - and also keep on adding various collections as and when we can. Again, if anyone has any suggestions let one of us know.
In the meantime we’d all like to express our gratitude to you: thank you for your support and your goodwill over this process. We're incredibly grateful for it all. This is a community project; we just hope that in the long-term we can have a revised Clavis that is as broadly useful as possible.
Thanks, and all best,
Danica (and Christof, and Clemens)
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Dr Danica Summerlin Department of History, University of Sheffield Jessop West 1, Upper Hanover Street Sheffield, S3 7RA
