Developing a Digital Framework for the Medieval Gaelic World

近几十年来，在研究前现代世界的在线资源的可用性和多样性方面取得了显着的进步。我们经常认为这将使研究变得更容易、更快、更有效率，但人们认识到，这也改变了学术研究的性质以及公众与之互动的方式。该网络将重点关注数字化对中世纪爱尔兰和苏格兰研究的影响。我们希望，更好地了解我们目前是如何使用数字资源的，将导致在未来的研究中更好地应用技术，并更智能地、更有创意地使用资源。盖尔语是爱尔兰、苏格兰和马恩岛在过去两千年的大部分时间里使用的母语。尽管这种语言很长寿，但在最近几个世纪里，它已经被边缘化，成为一种基本上隐藏的遗产。然而，它包含了欧洲除希腊语和拉丁语以外最广泛的母语早期文学，从公元7世纪一直延伸到今天，包括大量的故事、历史、法律和诗歌，这在世界上任何地方都是无与伦比的。数字化有可能向更广泛的受众开放盖尔文学和历史的资源，并改变研究的性质。尽管表面上看起来，现代版本中的中世纪文本，无论是在线的还是印刷的，很少能真实反映中世纪学者的著作。呈现这样的文本的现代研究人员会对展示什么做出一定的决定。由于大多数文本出现在多个手稿中，编辑必须做出许多往往重要的选择，这可能会从根本上影响文本的意思。这种对原作的调解在数字版本中往往会加剧。当它们出现在印刷品中时，版本通常包含一个精心制作的设备来表示手稿中的变化，但由于技术和资金限制，这在数字版本中很难表达。因此，具有讽刺意味的是，文本的在线版本往往缺乏这种丰富的上下文信息，并享有单一的、经过处理的文本的特权--过去的单一视角。另一方面，数字化也带来了以新的方式查看文本的巨大力量。通过数字标记特定的特征，如日期、姓名和地点，研究人员创造了阅读文本的创新方法。阅读不再需要是从头到尾的线性体验，而是用户可以通过文本构建自己的路径，在这个过程中创造新的意义。这个网络将研究数字化如何改变我们获取和阅读中世纪世界材料的方式。电子资源的长期可持续性仍然是一个紧迫的问题。印刷书籍被仔细编目并保存在图书馆，但通常负责保存知识的组织经常忽视在线资源。此外，技术的变化可能会使文档无法访问或无法使用。使用开放标准可以改善这种情况，但更复杂的网站需要复杂的软件来执行高级搜索，使我们能够有效地访问材料并增加价值，而且这些程序在未来更难保护。因此，至关重要的是，我们不仅要考虑如何在网上展示我们隐藏的遗产，还要考虑如何在未来保护它。

Recent decades have witnessed remarkable advances in the availability and variety of online resources for research into the pre-Modern world. We often think that this will make research easier, faster and more efficient, but there is a recognition that it has also changed the nature of scholarly research and the ways in which the public can interact with it. This network will focus on the impact of digitisation on research into medieval Ireland and Scotland. We hope that a better understanding of how we currently use digital resources will lead to improved applications of technology in future research and more intelligent, innovative use of resources. Gaelic is the native language spoken in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man for the best part of the last two thousand years. Despite its longevity, the language has been marginalised over recent centuries and has become a largely hidden heritage. However, it contains the most extensive early literature in a native language in Europe outside of Greek and Latin, stretching from the 7th century to the present day, including a vast body of tales, history, laws, and poetry which is wholly unparalleled anywhere in the world. Digitisation has the potential to open up the resources for Gaelic literature and history to a much wider audience and to transform the nature of research.Despite appearances, a medieval text in a modern edition, whether online or in print, is rarely a true reflection of what medieval scholars wrote. Modern researchers presenting such texts make certain decisions about what to display. As most texts appear in multiple manuscripts, the editor has to make many often significant choices that can radically affect the meaning of a text. This mediating of the original is often exacerbated in digital editions. When they appear in print, editions often contain an elaborate apparatus to represent the variations in the manuscripts but this is much more difficult to represent in digital editions due to technical and financial constraints. Ironically, therefore, an online edition of a text often lacks this rich contextual information and privileges a single, processed text - a single view of the past. On the other hand, digitisation also brings enormous power to view texts in new ways. By digitally tagging particular features, such as dates, names and places, researchers have created innovative methods for reading texts. Reading no longer needs to be a linear experience, going from start to finish, but users can construct their own pathways through texts and create new meaning in the process. This network will examine how digitisation has changed the way we access and read materials from the medieval world.The long-term sustainability of electronic resources remains a burning issue. Printed books are carefully catalogued and preserved in libraries, but online resources are frequently neglected by the organisations usually charged with conserving knowledge. Moreover, changes in technology can render documents inaccessible or unusable. The use of open standards can ameliorate this situation, but more complex websites require sophisticated software to perform advanced searches that allow us to access the material effectively and add value, and these programs are much more difficult to protect for the future. It is vital, therefore, that we consider not only how to represent our hidden heritage online, but also how to secure it for the future.