The Book Biography Machine at the Medieval Academy of America

The Book Biography Machine was recently presented at the conference for the Medieval Academy of America, along with studies of The Divine Comedy by Dante scholars Matthew Collins and Francesco Marco Aresu.

Currently in development, it is an interface that permits humanities scholars to map the diffusion of written works across geographic space and time in order to ask new questions about the history of literature. Written works are organized into collections of bibliographic information that are differentiated by color. Time is represented on the vertical axis, while space is represented across the horizontal plane. Information may either be initially downloaded via the WorldCat API over the Machine’s interface and iteratively edited for accuracy and scholarly intent, or it may be independently collected, curated and organized into a spreadsheet by the scholar. The latter was the case with the work presented at the MAA, since both Matthew and Marco rigorously constructed and verified their own very large data sets.

As a more recent development, individual fields of information are associated with their own tertiary color. The example above contains information for manuscript material for Divine Comedy Manuscripts from 1355 to 1400 – paper vs. parchment, to be precise. Paper is magenta / purple, while parchment is magenta / pink.

Matthew’s study centered on printed publications of Dante’s work, with time and place referring to point of publication, coinciding with the original graphic intent of the interface. Collections pertaining to printings in English and printings with illustrations were developed and visualized.

Marco’s study focused on written manuscripts, many of which had no record indicating place of creation – only current place of occupancy. This provided an interesting challenge for legibly visualizing his information, which we addressed by drawing lines back from each place of occupancy to the region surrounding Italy.

This opened up a conversation about the study of provenance in literature: What about the dates of accession for the different manuscripts? Were there places of rest between the area of origin and final destinations? Were there physical changes to any of the manuscripts along the way? If there is a general notion pertaining to any of these questions but no certainty, or if there simply no notion at all, how would probability or ambiguity be expressed so other scholars would know that there is a mystery to solve? To package these questions: Could there be a way for the Machine to express a deep and complex history for a few books in addition to a broad history for many?

In addition to other points of feedback, these questions are providing direction for further development of the Machine as a tool for humanities scholars.