Digital Publishing Platform: Humanities Connect

Elisa Bastianello

Page from Cesare Cesariano, Di Lucio Vitruvio Pollione De Architectura Libri Dece, Como, 1521 (BHMPI - Gf 200-1210 gr raro) - Processed Image.

Page from Cesare Cesariano, Di Lucio Vitruvio Pollione De Architectura Libri Dece, Como, 1521 (BHMPI - Gf 200-1210 gr raro) - Processed Image.

The Digital Publishing Platform at Bibliotheca Hertziana “Humanities Connect” aims to create a global environment not only for the articles or papers related to the journals, conferences, and researches that are connected to our institute, but also with the library holdings, especially digitizations of Rara books. For this reason, in collaboration with the READ Coop (https://readcoop.eu) we have created a first “Read & Search” platform where we are hosting transcriptions created by the use of neural text recognition Transkribus: (https://transkribus.humanitiesconnect.pub/). The first set of available books are from the BHMPI’s own digitization library (DLIB), but also from other MPI institutes like the KHI in Florence and the MPIGW in Berlin.
For critical editions a first beta TEI platform, based on TEI Publisher (https://teipublisher.com/) has been developed in collaboration with the Universität Zürich - Kunsthistorisches Institut, for the “Heinrich Wölfflin – Gesammelte Werke“ project (https://www.biblhertz.it/de/dept-weddigen/woelfflin) is available at http://hwgw.humanitiesconnect.pub. The platform makes it possible to annotate the bibliographic references and named entities in order to enrich all the content and will link all the volumes and content together.
The project also aims to publish journal articles and conference papers in digital format; a first series, Hertziana Studies in Art History, has been adapted to this format and made available in 2023. As a part of the department development, we are supporting researchers that need solutions for digital publishing. An ongoing project aims to help the transcription of the Enciclopedia del mondo antico by Pirro Ligorio as part of the “Ligorio Digitale” project (jointly with Università di Napoli Federico II, Universität Freiburg, Université de Rouen-Normandie, CENSUS, State Archive of Turin and more). Finally, with the support of DFG funding, we are planning to develop a complete platform to support digital publishing, especially in the humanities.