It was only a few weeks ago that I attended the lecture of a good colleague that gave words to my feelings of disciplinary in-between-ness in the academic system. This book falls in the discipline of medieval studies, no doubt, but it does not say anything about the Middle Ages per se. It is digital media studies, but my methods are not digital. It takes historical and art historical perspectives, but it is also deeply indebted to contemporary theory. I am classically trained as a codicologist, yet the material I work with is mostly digital stuff. The beauty of this, of course, is the depth that a transdisciplinary approach offers. Yet I always feel like the odd one out in academic spaces.
The label that was offered, and I gladly embrace, is that of the inverted (or anti-)digital humanist. Where digital humanists use new digital methods to investigate cultural sources, I ask classical humanities questions of digital phenomena. This idea is developed by Nina Beguš at the UC Berkeley School of Information. The innovation and the exciting possibilities that come with the increasing digitality of our humanities disciplines, cultural institutions, and cultural heritage, requires reflection and meta-analysis. This is what this book offers. It sees digitisation (and digital humanities in general) not just as something ultra-modern, but explicitly places it within the context of a longer history of keeping and studying cultural heritage. It inverses the discipline of digital humanities: and this is where I grow my academic roots.
This book is written in extension of my PhD research performed at the University of Groningen and the University of St Andrews. My thanks go to my supervisors Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Babette Hellemans and Kathryn Rudy, for helping me grow my academic roots in the first place. My gratitude goes out to the institutions in which ‘my’ (digital) manuscripts are kept and their wonderful staff members: the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague, the Staatsibliothek in Berlin and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. I also thank the Rathgen-Forschungslabor, the special collections at the Radboud University Library, Museum Valkhof, and the Cambridge University Library (CUL) Digital Content Unit for their help during my research. Special thanks to Scott Maloney at the CUL for helping me with the photography of the Bury Bible, Nadine Kuipers at Amperzand Text & Illustratie for the copy edit, and my student assistants Juliet Diekkämper and Johanna Laubrock for their assistance with the text.
A warm thank you also goes out to all my peers who offered advice and interesting chats. I am grateful for the support of and the many thoughtful conversations and the great evenings in the café/pub/Kneipe and online with colleagues through the years at Groningen, St Andrews, the Judge library in Cambridge, and, now, at the Ruhr Uni Bochum. All my love to my friends and my family.