Tool for the Analysis of Information Transfer in Manuscript Cultures

Tool for the Analysis of Information Transfer in Manuscript Cultures

This PoC project aims to alleviate the hesitancy of scholars working on texts preserved in manuscripts or other handwritten media, to adopt advanced digital methodologies in their research, by developing a free, shareable, flexible, low-threshold research tool, which may be used as a starting point for researchers interested in studying the textual transmission of information in manuscript cultures. It will take the form of a pre-designed but flexible data model, data-input framework, and database solution, through which data can be queried and exported for further analysis using relevant tools for statistical and network analysis. It will be accompanied by a detailed user manual guiding users through the workflow from data input to analysis, and tutorial videos explaining in non-specialist terms to scholars of historical textual corpora the procedures leading from database design and population to the application of relevant analytical tools. It will also contain a description of best practices and recommendations for the organization of collaborative team-based project implementation. The tool will be designed in such a way as to be easily adapted to a wide range of research projects on any type of textual corpus, regardless of its language or genre. The TInTraMac research tool will be freely downloadable and non-profit, but aims to save significant time and resources for researchers and research projects focusing on large-scale textual corpora, based on handwritten sources from manuscript cultures, promoting groundbreaking research by clearly demonstrating the benefits of employing such advanced digital methods in their fields. At the same time it aims to lower the threshold of adoption by making the TInTraMac research tool freely available, and it aims to flatten the learning curve for non-specialist users by making it highly accessible.