New research on copyists and watermarks
Klaus Keil
Monday, March 2, 2015
Colloquium: Researching Copyists and Watermarks in the Digital Age: Between Academic Specialization and Catalog Enrichment
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, 6-8 October 2014
The study of copyists and watermarks is deeply rooted in the German tradition of researching historical musical sources. Both branches of research are descended from the practice of making scholarly editions for collected works series, especially from the oldest among them, Bach’s collected works.
The Berlin State Library is working on a project involving its collection of autograph manuscripts, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and part of a larger initiative called KoFIM (Music Research and Information Competence Centre). Here sources are not only thought of as a work by an individual composer but also considered within the context of different collections that were put together in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
This project is being carried out in collaboration with the RISM Central Office, the Bavarian State Library in Munich, and the Berlin State Library. RISM standards are therefore used in the description of sources as is the cataloging program used by the Central Office, Kallisto. However, the amount of detail included in the descriptions and some technical aspects exceed the usual depth of RISM records. Copyists and provenance are examined more closely, aided by the context of the rest of the collection. Digital copies of the manuscripts are linked to the records and digitized writing samples are added to the copyists’ authority records.
Digitizing watermarks is more complicated. This is being accomplished using an infrared camera, which allows the watermarks to emerge more clearly from the rest of the page. The images of the watermarks are sent to the Watermark Information System (WZIS) and are thus also available in the Bernstein watermark portal. The watermarks are linked in the RISM records.
With these measures, the RISM online catalog is considerably enriched, therefore reaching the project goal of catalog enrichment.
This colloquium, presented by the Berlin State Library, was intended to summarize findings, now that the project is in its third year of funding. The full program and some presentations can be found on the library’s website.
An article about this conference appeared in the Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie and will be available free online in 12 months from the Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena.
Schmitz, Christina. “Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium – Schreiber- und Wasserzeichenforschung im digitalen Zeitalter: Zwischen wissenschaftlicher Spezialdisziplin und Catalog enrichment.” Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie 62, no. 1 (2015): 49-53. Available online in 2016.
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