Date and Time

The Board Meeting will be held on Zoom on December 20 at 11 am CET (10 am GMT). The Zoomlink will be sent out beforehand.

Agenda

  1. Welcome
  2. Deciding on a minute taker
  3. Agenda and potential addenda
  4. Year in Review: Activities 2024
  5. Quo vadis, Network?
    1. How open or closed do we want the network to be?
    2. Frequency of Meetings, Possibility of Meeting in Person
    3. What Do We Want and/or Need from this Network?
  6. Workshops, Events, Seminars
    1. Planned and upcoming
    2. Ideas for future events
  7. Tasks and Responsibilities
  8. Misc

Minutes

Attendants: Balduin Landolt, Beeke Stegmann, Eline Elmiger, Guðrún Laufey Guðmundsdóttir, Madita Knöpfle (Chair), Sven Kraus (Presiding), William Duba (Minutes)

1. Welcome

The meeting began at 11:02 AM, Central European Time. Sven is moderating.

2. Deciding on a minute taker

William Duba will be taking the minutes.

3. Agenda and potential addenda

Additional items were added to Miscellaneous: Website/GitHub, external communication, and Python Menota Parser.

4. Year in Review: Activities 2024

Compared to 2023, 2024 was a relatively low-key year. The Network held two workshops, coordinated by Balduin and Sven, on RDF and Graph Databases. A couple of informal online coffee chats were held. The mailing list remains an opportunity for messaging members of the group.

5. Quo vadis, Network?

1. How open or closed do we want the network to be?

In general and in relation to a query from Tarrin relaying one of a doctoral student, discussion addressed how open the Network should be. The general consensus was that the Network should be open to new members, although the issue was raised of how to introduce prospective members to the network. Inviting people to workshops and meetings was suggested, as well as including people on the mailing list.

Another question involved the level of engagement required for membership. Should dormant members be contacted to see if they have an interest in continuing? Related to this is that the biographies on the about page should be updated, and members are encouraged to go there and keep their information current.

2. Frequency of Meetings, Possibility of Meeting in Person

The value of regular 30-minute “coffee meetings”, where members informally talk about their research, was repeatedly underscored. An in-person meeting would be desirable, and members are encouraged to seek out funding sources to make this possible.

3. What Do We Want and/or Need from this Network?

Beeke raised the topic of the Network’s connection to Menota. With retirement, Menota has been in a transition phase, but the value of the resource to the community, not just as an archive, but as a platform with a handbook and tools of broader application. While it will persist as an archive with XML-encoded data, it will hopefully become more open in the future. The possibilities of aligning the Network with some of the actions to advance Menota were discussed, including a possible Network workshop on Menota.

6. Workshops, Events, Seminars

1. Planned and upcoming

On 7 February, Juliane has organized a workshop on Digital Paleography with Peter Stokes.

At the Saga Conference in August, the Network will have a Round Table featuring many members. Sven will be contacting those participants in mid-February.

2. Ideas for future events

Sven raised the question about the Manuscript Summer School, which will be in Copenhagen, starting around 10 August, and the possibility of having some input with regards to Digital Codicology/Paleography/Tools.

Madita and Sven will investigate setting up a workshop on MUFI/Runicode and the “Stroke Selector” (https://mufi.info/q.php?p=mufi/runic/strokeselect).

Sven drew attention to the Call for Papers for the 4th IEEE Conference on Digital Preservation and Processing Technologies of Written Heritage and expressed the desire that medievalists be represented there.

7. Tasks and Responsibilities

Madita gracefully accepted to continue serving as chair of the Network. Given the absence of Tarrin and Svenja, the coordination of workshops was deferred to the February workshop.

8. Miscellaneous

  • GitHub: if pull requests are not being tended to, or otherwise updates are needed, members are invited to send Balduin or Sven an email.
  • External communication: currently, the website is considered the primary means of external communications.
  • Python Parser: Sven has developed a Python parser for Menota, that processes the XML and returns a class entity. It is approaching v0.1 status.
  • News from Fribourg: William is organizing Swiss guidelines for photographing manuscripts. E-codices will need a new version, and he is looking for anyone interested in discussing what they’d like from a digital manuscript library.

The meeting ended around 12:23 Central European Time.