Migration of the database "Cyrillic and Glagolitic Books and Manuscripts in Sweden" to ALVIN
The aims of the project are to migrate the contents of the database Cyrillic and Glagolitic Books and Manuscripts in Sweden (CGS) to the digital platform Alvin. CGS is the result of the infrastructure project Digitalised Descriptions of Slavic Cyrillic Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Swedish Libraries and Archives (2010–2013), supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. It includes c. 700 records with descriptions of early Slavic manuscripts and printed books in Cyrillic or Glagolitic script, which are preserved at approximately twenty Swedish libraries and archives. Alvin is a national digital platform developed and maintained by Uppsala University Library for the long-term preservation and accessibility of digitised cultural heritage materials at Swedish cultural heritage institutions.
In addition to the already existing contents, new records will be created in Alvin for descriptions and digital images of watermarks attested in the materials, which will help to develop Alvin into an important resource also for the study of early paper, both in Sweden and internationally.
The integration of the descriptions of the Slavic materials in Alvin will ensure the long-term preservation and maintenance of the data, which will also be made freely available to both researchers and the general public. The inclusion of the materials in Alvin will thus open new possibilities for interdisciplinary research within Swedish and European cultural heritage studies.
In addition to the already existing contents, new records will be created in Alvin for descriptions and digital images of watermarks attested in the materials, which will help to develop Alvin into an important resource also for the study of early paper, both in Sweden and internationally.
The integration of the descriptions of the Slavic materials in Alvin will ensure the long-term preservation and maintenance of the data, which will also be made freely available to both researchers and the general public. The inclusion of the materials in Alvin will thus open new possibilities for interdisciplinary research within Swedish and European cultural heritage studies.
Final report
Aim and development
The aim of the project was to migrate the results of the earlier RJ-supported project Digitalized Descriptions of Slavic Cyrillic Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Swedish Libraries and Archives to the Alvin platform in order both to ensure longtime preservation of these results and to make them freely available for further research. In addition, the project aimed to create new records in Alvin for the watermarks on paper attested in the described manuscripts and printed books. The project team has included Antoaneta Granberg, Gothenburg University (who was also the project manager of the earlier project), Stefan Andersson, Uppsala University Library, consortium leader of Alvin, and Per Ambrosiani, Umeå University (project manager). Important contributions to the project have also been made by Kent-Inge Andersson and Per Cullhed, both at Uppsala University Library.
The migration of the information to the Alvin format made it necessary to further reflect on the applicability of different descriptive principles and formats for the materials, and also to develop already existing formats in order to support their contextualisation. In this connection has, for example, new “virtual” collections have been created for manuscript fragments that have originally been parts of the same manuscript codex, but today are preserved in different repositories. The project has also addressed questions of how best to create virtual relations between existing printed and digital descriptions of the same manuscript or book, many of which have been described earlier in both printed publications and in digital catalogs and databases, and the new Alvin records include references and links to as many such resources as possible, in order to give the user a comprehensive guide to relevant research results.
The structuring of the information in Alvin has also generated questions about the wider national and international contextualisation of the materials. How can the Slavic collections be understood and studied as an integral part of the cultural heritage of Sweden? How can information about persons with relations to concrete books/mss (as authors, translators, scribes, earlier owners, etc.) be integrated with corresponding data in other collections in Sweden and abroad in order to produce new knowledge about early European book production and text transmission?
The work on the records describing watermarks has in several cases made it possible to identify that the same paper can be attested in more than one source, which offers important contributions to the dating and localisation of manuscripts and printed books with unknown or unclear provenance.
Finally, the project has also brought to the fore how the understanding of the both material and immaterial character of the described books and manuscripts influences the strategies for longtime preservation of cultural heritage items in general. As the project strives to include information about Slavic materials in a broader discussion about the preservation of cultural heritage, questions about accessibility, searching possibilities in several languages, internationalisation, etc., have informed the development and implementation of the project.
Results
The main aims of the project have been reached: all earlier existing database records have been migrated to Alvin, and the Alvin records have been linked to already existing authority records for persons, places, organisations, etc. Many new authority records have also been created. Thus, the comprehensive information about the Slavic manuscripts and printed books that was compiled as a result of the earlier RJ-supported project is now freely available through the Alvin platform (see http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-523769 for an overview of the collection). This opens new possibilities for researchers and other users within Slavic studies, book history, cultural heritage studies both in Sweden and abroad to get access to structured information about Slavic collections in some twenty public libraries and archives in Sweden: the university libraries in Uppsala, Stockholm, Lund, Göteborg, and Umeå, the National Library of Sweden, the National Archives, the city libraries in Västerås, Norrköping, and Växjö, and libraries and archives in Skara, Västervik, Jönköping, Örebro, Karlstad, etc.
However, as the Alvin format proved to offer even more possibilities for important quality improvement of the original results, the final editing of the Alvin records has not been possible to complete by the end of March 2024. Such improvements include, for example, the linking of the new records to already existing records in Alvin (various authority records, records with results from earlier projects, etc.), and the adding of digital surrogates to several records. In addition, many records have been linked to Wikipedia articles and Wikidata records, and conversely, references to Alvin have been included in relevant Wikipedia articles and Wikidata records. These and other quality improvements have been more time-consuming than what was originally planned, and will therefore continue. The possibilities within the Alvin format to further improve the quality of the records make it also important to continuously add new information to the records, such as, for example, references to future research publications, results of digitalisation projects, etc. In addition, by March 2024 only approximately forty new watermark records have been created and integrated with their relevant “host” records, and the editing and publishing of the remaining watermark records will be finished within the near future.
So far, the project results have been presented and discussed at several seminars: first at a seminar at Uppsala University Library in February 2023 with the participation of Granberg, Andersson, Ambrosiani, and invited researchers, then in March 2023, when Granberg and Ambrosiani presented the project results at the meeting of the “International Commission on Computer Supported Processing of Mediæval Slavonic Manuscripts and Early Printed Books to the International Committee of Slavists” in Freiburg, Germany, and online. The project results have also been presented by Ambrosiani at a seminar at Stockholm University in November 2023.
Use and current research
The data available through the Alvin platform is currently used within a comprehensive dissertation project on the Swedish collection of Medieval Slavic parchment fragments conducted by Larysa Korobenko at Stockholm University, which is planned to be finished by June 2024. At Gothenburg University, master students in Slavic Medieval studies actively use the Alvin platform to find subjects for their theses.
In addition, the project has encouraged increased interest in the Slavic collections at several of the concerned Swedish repositories, which has resulted in the discovery of until now unknown manuscripts and books, the descriptions of which have now been included in Alvin.
Unforeseen technical and methodological problems, deviations from the original project plan
On the whole, the migration of the information to Alvin has been conducted successfully according to the original plan. However, as has been described above, the creation of the watermark records turned out to be more complicated and therefore time-consuming than what was originally planned. A technical problem that has not yet been solved is how to display all Church Slavonic Cyrillic letters that occur mainly in headings and content fields in the Alvin records.
Integration into the organisation, and longterm preservation and support
The Alvin platform is administered by the Alvin consortium through Uppsala University Library, and the consortium is responsible for the longterm preservation, support, and accessibility of the results of the project.
Accessibility, open access and open science
All data are freely accessible through the Alvin user interface. The availability of the data is licensed with Public Domain Mark (no known copyright) according to Creative Commons, this information is included in every individual record.
International cooperation
The project has resulted in contacts with several European libraries where research is being conducted on dispersed collections or manuscripts with parts preserved at more than one repository, such as, for example, the project at the Latvian National Library on the reconstruction of the former library of the Riga Jesuit College, parts of which were brought to Sweden during the 1620s. There are also plans to start cooperation with the “International Association of Paper Historians” (IPH, see http://www.paperhistory.org/) in order to include the new Swedish and Russian watermark type terms that were developed within the project in the IPH standard, which would lead to improved searching possibilities and benefit international research on early paper. In addition, we plan to further develop the cooperaton with relevant international databases, catalogs, and projects, such as, for example, the Repertorium project (http://repertorium.obdurodon.org) and the Ohio State University Library (https://library.osu.edu), which both include information on parts of the Swedish Slavic collections.
Relevant publications
See separate list of publications
Websites
Alvin: https://www.alvin-portal.org/
CGS — Cyrillic and Glagolitic books and manuscripts in Sweden : collection overview: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-523769
The aim of the project was to migrate the results of the earlier RJ-supported project Digitalized Descriptions of Slavic Cyrillic Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Swedish Libraries and Archives to the Alvin platform in order both to ensure longtime preservation of these results and to make them freely available for further research. In addition, the project aimed to create new records in Alvin for the watermarks on paper attested in the described manuscripts and printed books. The project team has included Antoaneta Granberg, Gothenburg University (who was also the project manager of the earlier project), Stefan Andersson, Uppsala University Library, consortium leader of Alvin, and Per Ambrosiani, Umeå University (project manager). Important contributions to the project have also been made by Kent-Inge Andersson and Per Cullhed, both at Uppsala University Library.
The migration of the information to the Alvin format made it necessary to further reflect on the applicability of different descriptive principles and formats for the materials, and also to develop already existing formats in order to support their contextualisation. In this connection has, for example, new “virtual” collections have been created for manuscript fragments that have originally been parts of the same manuscript codex, but today are preserved in different repositories. The project has also addressed questions of how best to create virtual relations between existing printed and digital descriptions of the same manuscript or book, many of which have been described earlier in both printed publications and in digital catalogs and databases, and the new Alvin records include references and links to as many such resources as possible, in order to give the user a comprehensive guide to relevant research results.
The structuring of the information in Alvin has also generated questions about the wider national and international contextualisation of the materials. How can the Slavic collections be understood and studied as an integral part of the cultural heritage of Sweden? How can information about persons with relations to concrete books/mss (as authors, translators, scribes, earlier owners, etc.) be integrated with corresponding data in other collections in Sweden and abroad in order to produce new knowledge about early European book production and text transmission?
The work on the records describing watermarks has in several cases made it possible to identify that the same paper can be attested in more than one source, which offers important contributions to the dating and localisation of manuscripts and printed books with unknown or unclear provenance.
Finally, the project has also brought to the fore how the understanding of the both material and immaterial character of the described books and manuscripts influences the strategies for longtime preservation of cultural heritage items in general. As the project strives to include information about Slavic materials in a broader discussion about the preservation of cultural heritage, questions about accessibility, searching possibilities in several languages, internationalisation, etc., have informed the development and implementation of the project.
Results
The main aims of the project have been reached: all earlier existing database records have been migrated to Alvin, and the Alvin records have been linked to already existing authority records for persons, places, organisations, etc. Many new authority records have also been created. Thus, the comprehensive information about the Slavic manuscripts and printed books that was compiled as a result of the earlier RJ-supported project is now freely available through the Alvin platform (see http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-523769 for an overview of the collection). This opens new possibilities for researchers and other users within Slavic studies, book history, cultural heritage studies both in Sweden and abroad to get access to structured information about Slavic collections in some twenty public libraries and archives in Sweden: the university libraries in Uppsala, Stockholm, Lund, Göteborg, and Umeå, the National Library of Sweden, the National Archives, the city libraries in Västerås, Norrköping, and Växjö, and libraries and archives in Skara, Västervik, Jönköping, Örebro, Karlstad, etc.
However, as the Alvin format proved to offer even more possibilities for important quality improvement of the original results, the final editing of the Alvin records has not been possible to complete by the end of March 2024. Such improvements include, for example, the linking of the new records to already existing records in Alvin (various authority records, records with results from earlier projects, etc.), and the adding of digital surrogates to several records. In addition, many records have been linked to Wikipedia articles and Wikidata records, and conversely, references to Alvin have been included in relevant Wikipedia articles and Wikidata records. These and other quality improvements have been more time-consuming than what was originally planned, and will therefore continue. The possibilities within the Alvin format to further improve the quality of the records make it also important to continuously add new information to the records, such as, for example, references to future research publications, results of digitalisation projects, etc. In addition, by March 2024 only approximately forty new watermark records have been created and integrated with their relevant “host” records, and the editing and publishing of the remaining watermark records will be finished within the near future.
So far, the project results have been presented and discussed at several seminars: first at a seminar at Uppsala University Library in February 2023 with the participation of Granberg, Andersson, Ambrosiani, and invited researchers, then in March 2023, when Granberg and Ambrosiani presented the project results at the meeting of the “International Commission on Computer Supported Processing of Mediæval Slavonic Manuscripts and Early Printed Books to the International Committee of Slavists” in Freiburg, Germany, and online. The project results have also been presented by Ambrosiani at a seminar at Stockholm University in November 2023.
Use and current research
The data available through the Alvin platform is currently used within a comprehensive dissertation project on the Swedish collection of Medieval Slavic parchment fragments conducted by Larysa Korobenko at Stockholm University, which is planned to be finished by June 2024. At Gothenburg University, master students in Slavic Medieval studies actively use the Alvin platform to find subjects for their theses.
In addition, the project has encouraged increased interest in the Slavic collections at several of the concerned Swedish repositories, which has resulted in the discovery of until now unknown manuscripts and books, the descriptions of which have now been included in Alvin.
Unforeseen technical and methodological problems, deviations from the original project plan
On the whole, the migration of the information to Alvin has been conducted successfully according to the original plan. However, as has been described above, the creation of the watermark records turned out to be more complicated and therefore time-consuming than what was originally planned. A technical problem that has not yet been solved is how to display all Church Slavonic Cyrillic letters that occur mainly in headings and content fields in the Alvin records.
Integration into the organisation, and longterm preservation and support
The Alvin platform is administered by the Alvin consortium through Uppsala University Library, and the consortium is responsible for the longterm preservation, support, and accessibility of the results of the project.
Accessibility, open access and open science
All data are freely accessible through the Alvin user interface. The availability of the data is licensed with Public Domain Mark (no known copyright) according to Creative Commons, this information is included in every individual record.
International cooperation
The project has resulted in contacts with several European libraries where research is being conducted on dispersed collections or manuscripts with parts preserved at more than one repository, such as, for example, the project at the Latvian National Library on the reconstruction of the former library of the Riga Jesuit College, parts of which were brought to Sweden during the 1620s. There are also plans to start cooperation with the “International Association of Paper Historians” (IPH, see http://www.paperhistory.org/) in order to include the new Swedish and Russian watermark type terms that were developed within the project in the IPH standard, which would lead to improved searching possibilities and benefit international research on early paper. In addition, we plan to further develop the cooperaton with relevant international databases, catalogs, and projects, such as, for example, the Repertorium project (http://repertorium.obdurodon.org) and the Ohio State University Library (https://library.osu.edu), which both include information on parts of the Swedish Slavic collections.
Relevant publications
See separate list of publications
Websites
Alvin: https://www.alvin-portal.org/
CGS — Cyrillic and Glagolitic books and manuscripts in Sweden : collection overview: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-523769