IAS research associate Melissa Moreton will co-ordinate individual research clusters based all over the globe, from South Asia to the Americas.Ī component of the project is to find better ways to conserve old manuscripts. UTL project librarian Rachel Di Cresce will direct the project’s technical development and approach to intellectual property, data rights, data sovereignty, sustainability, curation and preservation. The results of the research will be made available through open-source code, open data repositories, academic publications, media posts, podcasts, videos and exhibits. “We’re working together to preserve and share the knowledge of the past,” says Jessica Lockhart, the Old Books New Science Lab’s head of research, calling this the “most ambitious project” the lab has ever undertaken. Jessica Lockhart (Photo by Nick Iwanyshyn) She was the co-curator for the Aga Khan Museum exhibition from which the project sprang. ![]() ![]() Akbari was a professor at U of T for nearly 25 years, including serving as director for the Centre for Medieval Studies between 20 before moving to IAS in New Jersey. The project leaders are Gillespie, Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) Professor Suzanne Conklin Akbari, and University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) IT Director Sian Meikle, who will provide oversight for project goals and outcomes. Because the pages are wavy, and both the ink and the page are made of carbon, reconstructing a 3D model of the scanned layers involves the use of AI. To get past this hurdle and access its contents, researchers conduct micro-CT scans of the book, layer by layer – not page by page. Some of these books are so fragile that opening them to read would destroy the manuscript. The Hidden Stories project examines manuscripts in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and across the world including China, Ethiopia, East Africa, North America, Tunisia and Nepal. That display, which included contributions from U of T, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and other collaborators, showcased manuscripts including a 17th century manuscript of the Bhagavad Gita from Kashmir. This latest project is named after a public exhibition displayed at the Aga Khan Museum from October 2021 to February 2022. ![]() Everything from fungal growth on its pages to the trade routes involved in the materials used to make the book will be studied.Īlexandra Gillespie, vice-president and principal of U of T Mississauga, and principal investigator for the Hidden Stories project, joins researchers working on The Book and the Silks Roads project, March 2022. (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn) The Hidden Stories project will run from November 2022 to January 2027 and aims to explore the systems, peoples and cultures that make a book, including its physical and biological properties that reveal new knowledge. “That’s this ‘hidden stories’ idea, that there are stories about the makers of books, the users of books, that leave all kinds of traces that are non-textual.” “I became really interested in the way that there were stories about books that could be told that were not only about the texts that are in them,” says U of T Vice-President and U of T Mississauga Principal Alexandra Gillespie, who leads the Old Books New Science Lab. ![]() It’s the latest in a series of projects in global book history co-ordinated by the research team at UTM’s Old Books New Science Lab. The Mellon Foundation has given a $2.69 million grant for the next four years to support the project, which involves a collaboration with 130 researchers – humanists, scientists, librarians, curators, conservators and others – at U of T and from 60 institutions across the world. U of T is launching a collaborative and interdisciplinary project entitled Hidden Stories: New Approaches to the Local and Global History of the Book, funded by the Mellon Foundation. It’s those obscured treasures – hidden stories – that University of Toronto researchers want to uncover. But a closer look unlocks a treasure trove of knowledge. At first glance, the dusty and worn pages of an old book from centuries ago might not reveal more than their written content.
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