Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #fragmentology
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I know we're all obsessed with the stream of discoveries about #receptiogate, the revolving-door website updates, & Rossi's doubling-down claims of innocence that are easily disproven, but I also want to talk about her #fragmentoogy work, which is troubling in several respects...
As many of you know, I have been working closely with @FragmentariumMS and many other scholars for decades to develop best-practices for cataloguing, data-modeling, and digital reconstructions of dismembered manuscripts, i.e. #fragmentology
To her credit, Rossi is doing that too, working to recontruct recently-dismembered Books of Hours, transcribing them to allow for deep analysis of the recovered liturgy. This is a very worthy goal, & the transcriptions, while not always correct, are useful. So that’s great! But…
Look, people, it's not that hard. The rules of #Fragmentology are simple and finite. 1) If you are going to piece a dismembered manuscript back together online, do it with intellectual honesty.
2) If there's are missing leaves, show us where it is by indicating lacunae, as in this screenshot of my own work on the Beauvais Missal: 
3) If there's no binding, don't photoshop the reconstruction into one. Digital reconstructions aren't about "fixing" physical imperfections by adding elements to make it look pretty.
Remember a few weeks ago when I gave a lecture @imc_leeds about my reconstruction of the Beauvais Missal & announced that leaf no. 113 had landed in my inbox the day before? Now that I’m caught up on other things, I can work on placing it in the reconstruction. Here’s how…
Step 1: identify recto & verso. Generally a straightforward task…look for the binding holes (i.e. the gutter), which, in a manuscript that reads left -> right will be on the left of the recto side. In this case, the leaf is heavily trimmed on all sides, so no binding holes!
No binding holes, no problem. Just look at the text, and figure out which side continues the text from the other. In this case, though, the leaf is framed and only one side is visible! How to tell recto from verso, then? Is it impossible? Certainly not!
Check it out, folks, VCEditor now lets me show reconstructed formerly-conjoint bifolia of the fragmentary Beauvais Missal! SO COOL!
For example, here's a quire from August of the Sanctorale section. I've found 5 of the original 8 leaves of the quire, including two formerly-conjoint bifolia (in bright green):
Using the new feature, I can actually see the reconstructed outer bifolium of the quire! Here's the outer side, showing the catchwords on the final verso (left) and the conjoint first recto (right):
