Codificare il codice. La materialità del libro e la sua digitalizzazione verso una codicologia digitale

Abstract

Digital codicology is still an emerging discipline with many open technical and methodological issues. In fact, not all the features of books can be digitally acquired with traditional methods, which makes book digitization a complex process that requires the adoption of advanced digitization and imaging techniques and modeling processes in order to preserve the heterogeneity and granularity of original materials and satisfy the research needs of scholars such as bibliographers, codicologists, conservators, and cultural heritage scientists. The physicality and materiality of books provide information as much as the text they contain, and only through understanding the remediation process and the specific objectives we want to achieve with digital surrogates, can we isolate the qualities necessary for a particular interpretation, thus creating Digital Cultural Objects that enable new digital research practices. The production of more comprehensive digital surrogates that combine untransferable features with traditional information could allow the implementation of algorithmic reading methodologies for book objects, leading to digital codicology.

Keywords

• digitization
• books
• materiality
• digital transformation
• codicology