Medieval Rolls in a Digital Environment

Medieval rolls are notoriously difficult to display and publish. Digital publishing tends to focus on codices and to function at the level of the turning page. The physical format of rolls - membranes of parchment stitched together to form a long and narrow strip, which could be dozens of feet long - defies these expectations; other options are needed to effectively edit and publish medieval rolls in a way that respects their physical format and doesn’t force them into a framework designed for books.

Digital Mappa (DM) is one of these options. Originally designed for the editing of medieval maps of the world, DM centers the image and enables the annotation and linking of both images and text. DM is particularly useful for the editing of rolls, as the two examples in this lecture will illustrate. 

Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis, professor of practice in manuscript studies at the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science and executive director of the Medieval Academy of America, will present on the Digital Chronique 2.0, a DM edition of the Chronique Anonyme Universelle, a lavishly illustrated scroll history of the world from Creation to the fifteenth century.

Dot Porter, SIMS founding member and Curator of Digital Research Services, will present on Ms. Roll 1066: Genealogical Chronicle of the Kings of England to Edward IV, circa 1461, originally published online in 2012 and republished in DM earlier this year.