Scope

This journal and section is closed for submission

Digital Paleography and Book History is devoted to the application of technology to manuscripts and printed material broadly conceived. The recent availability of digital images of manuscripts and print pages, combined with advances in image processing, has lead to a dramatic increase in the number of studies related to identification of writers, printed type or block prints; classification of script, typeface, and decoration; and fragment matching, word spotting and stroke analysis, among others. Articles are featured on any of these topics, as well as on the challenges associated with them, such as establishing ground truth, verifying results, and ensuring transparency for interdisciplinary audiences. We are not limited to paleography and typography but also other areas of book history and the physical aspect of other formats, including documents and newspapers. This includes codicology in all its aspects (such as analysis of parchment, paper, inks and pigments, geographical and chronological distributions of codicological forms, binding structures, and so on). Also showcased are other topics, including but not limited to relevant visualizations, large-scale analysis of mise en page, art history in a book or documentary context, and more theoretical or methodological topics such as conceptual models of all aspects of the book, as well as the relationship between the digital and the physical.

Digital Paleography and Book History encompasses not only the Latin (Western European) alphabet, but also other writing systems, and includes both historical and contemporary source material. The focus is on writing or print with pen and ink, but other forms are considered, such as writing with stylus (in wax or clay), brushes, or in inscriptions. Articles on both historical and contemporary material are included from any discipline or (preferably) disciplines, provided that both ‘digital’ and ‘book history’ are considered (both defined in their broadest sense).

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