Repertorium of Old Bulgarian Literature and Letters
Location:
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/index.html
Last revised: 2005-12-10 by David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt+repertorium@pitt.edu)
Main Project Page:
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/index.html
Copyright Notice:
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/copyright.html
Contents
The Repertorium of Old Bulgarian Literature and
Letters was conceived as an archival repository capable of encoding
and preserving in SGML (and, subsequently, XML) format archeographic,
palaeographic, codicological, textological, and literary-historical data
concerning original and translated medieval texts represented in Balkan
Cyrillic manuscripts. The files are intended to serve both as documentation
(fulfilling the goals of traditional manuscript catalogues) and as direct input
for computer-assisted philological research.
The Repertorium project grew out of an initiative of David J.
Birnbaum (University of Pittsburgh), Andrej Bojadžiev (University of
Sofia), Milena Dobreva (Institute of Mathematics, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences), and Anisava Miltenova (Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences) in 1994, with early SGML development assistance from Berend Dijk and
Harry Gaylord (both then of the University of Groningen). Our work has been
guided by the following principles:
- Reliance whenever possible on open and non-proprietary standards
(accessibility of data should not be compromised through reliance on
proprietary formats)
- Compatibility whenever possible with existing open and
non-proprietary scholarly electronic text initiatives (Slavistic projects
should be compatible with similar projects based in other cultural
traditions)
- Portability of texts (platform-independence, system-independence,
application-independence)
- Multiple use (data formats should be appropriate for various
purposes, and should not be constrained by individual applications)
- Preservation of manuscripts in electronic form
- Support for the structured representation of data according to
Slavistic codicological, orthographic, paleographic, textological, and other
scholarly traditions
- Support for the open exchange of scholarly information and materials
without cost
The Repertorium project was formulated under that name in 1996
as a long-term sponsored research project of the Institute of Literature of the
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and it continues or incorporates other specific
titled sponsored research projects, including:
- Computer-Supported Processing of Slavic Manuscripts (Institute of
Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and University of Pittsburgh,
1994–95)
- Computer-Supported Processing of Slavonic Manuscripts and Early
Printed Books (Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and
Central European University, 1997–98)
- Computer Data Base of Late Medieval Bulgarian Literature
(Fourteenth–Eighteenth Centuries) (Institute of Literature, Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences and Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and
Antiquities, 2002–2005)
- Computer Processing and Analysis of Slavic Manuscripts (Institute of
Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Institute of Russian Literature,
Russian Academy of Sciences, 2002–2005)
- Machine-Readable Description and Searchable Catalogues of Cyrillic
Manuscripts (Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Central
Library, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, British Library, 2003–2006)
At the instigation of Anisava Miltenova,
a thematic
panel dedicated to the computer-assisted analysis of medieval Slavic
manuscripts and printed books was organized for the Twelfth International
Congress of Slavists in Kraków in 1998, with participation by Slavists
from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Macedonia, the UK, and the US. At the
conclusion of the conference, the International Committee of Slavists
authorized the establishment of a
Special
Commission to the Executive Council of the Committee for the Computer-Supported
Processing of Slavic Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, with David J.
Birnbaum and Anisava Miltenova as Presidents of the Commission, Ralph Cleminson
as Vice President, and Andrej Bojadžiev as Secretary. The Commission met
in Sofia in 2000 and again immediately before the
Pomorie
conference in September 2002, and has organized a
round-table
for inclusion in the Thirteenth International Congress of Slavists in Ljubljana
in 2003, with participation by Slavists from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic,
Italy, the UK, and the US.
Ongoing activities within the framework of the Repertorium
include the following:
- Conversion of existing files (over 300 manuscript descriptions) from
TEI P3 SGML to P4 XML
- Encoding of additional manuscript descriptions
- Revision of DTDs to reflect emerging philological requirements within
the Repertorium project
- Revision of DTDs to maximize conformance with similar projects based
in other cultural traditions
- Development of new software tools for philological research on the
basis of encoded manuscript descriptions
- Publication of primary philological research based on encoded
manuscript descriptions
- Publication of methodological studies in humanities computing based
on innovative applications developed within the framework of the
Repertorium project
- Organization of periodic international conferences involving not only
scholars engaged specifically in the computer-assisted analysis of medieval
Slavic manuscripts and printed books, but also both non-Slavists at the
forefront of humanities computing and Slavic philologists who are preparing to
begin to employ computer technology in their research
- Publication in electronic or paper format of individual research
reports, conference proceedings, and other collections of articles related to
the work of the Repertorium project, as well as participation by
members of the project in both Slavistic and humanities computing
conferences
A Bulgarian-language introduction to the project (written in 2000) by
Anisava Miltenova is available at
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/2000_bulgarian_overview.pdf.
- Angusheva, Adelina, University of Lancaster
- Atanasova, Desislava, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences
- Birnbaum, David J., University of Pittsburgh (djbpitt+repertorium@pitt.edu)
- Bojadžiev, Andrej, Univerity of Sofia (andreib@slav.uni-sofia.bg)
- Cleminson, Ralph, University of Portsmouth (ralph.cleminson@port.ac.uk)
- Dimitrova, Dimitrinka, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences
- Dimitrova, Margaret, University of Sofia
- Georgieva, Nina, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences
- Getov, Dorotej, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences
- Jordanova, Marina, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences
- Lazov, Rumjan, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences
- Miltenova, Anisava, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences (anmilten@bas.bg)
- Petrova, Maja, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences
- Radoslavova, Diljana, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences
- Stankova, Radoslava, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences
- Stojkova, Ana, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences
- Tomova, Elena, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences
List of Conferences and Conference Panels
Description
This first international conference dedicated to the application of
electronic text technology to the study of medieval Slavic manuscripts (and,
subsequently, also early printed books) was conceived by David J. Birnbaum
(University of Pittsburgh), Milena Dobreva (Institute of Mathematics and
Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), and Anisava Miltenova (Institute
of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) as a way to unite
state-of-the-art philological research being conducted in Bulgaria without the
significant use of computers and new developments in humanities computing. The
conference was attended by scholars from Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic,
Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, the UK, the US, and
Yugoslavia (Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia), and included not only regular
panels, but also workshops on Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and
the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) (David J. Birnbaum, Nicholas Finke, Harry
Gaylord, Winfried Bader) and TUSTEP (Winfriend Bader), as well as an entire
session devoted to KLEIO.
The conference was partially supported by grants from the International
Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the U.S. Department
of State (Title VIII) and the John. D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
by the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe (JCEE) of the American Council of
Learned Societies (ACLS), by the Open Society Fund, and by the Soros Center for
the Arts (Sofia). The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) underwrote part of the
cost of the TEI workshop held in connection with the conference and SoftQuad,
Inc. donated temporary licenses for the use of Author/Editor SGML editing
software.
Proceedings
Birnbaum, David J., Andrej T. Bojadžiev, Milena p. Dobreva,
Anisava L. Miltenova, ed. Computer Processing of Medieval Slavic
Mauscripts. Proceedings of the First International Conference.
24–28 July 1995. Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. Sofia: Professor Marin Drinov
Academic Publishing House. 1995. ISBN 954-430-417-7. List of contents available
at:
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/1995_blagoevgrad/contents.html.
Abstracts of all presentations were published in the conference program:
David J. Birnbaum, Andrej T. Bojadžiev, Milena p. Dobreva, Anisava L.
Miltenova, ed., Computer Processing of Medieval Slavic Mauscripts. First
International Conference, Blagoevgrad 1995. Abstracts. Sofia: Institute
of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. 1995. ISBN 954-8712-02-4.
Reports
Description
This three-day conference was dedicated to investigating a wide range of
approaches to different questions pertaining to the study of variation in
medieval Slavic manuscripts. Thematic sessions were organized around the
following four topics:
- Text Modeling. Presentations addressed both general
and specifically Slavistic issues in the preparation of digital critical
editions, as well as the study of variation in manuscripts, variation in
printed books, and guidelines for planning a Corpus of Old Church
Slavonic.
- Orthographic Modeling. Presentations examined from
both synchronic and diachronic perspectives the orthographic variation of texts
written at different times and in different Slavic languages.
- Problems and Solutions. Presentations addressed the
treatment of general problems at a variety of levels within the framework of
specific individual projects.
- The Repertorium Template for Slavic
Manuscripts. Presentations surveyed the philological scholarship
enabled by the SGML Template for Slavic Manuscripts (TSM) first developed in
1994–95 by members of the Repertorium project and employed
between then and the time of the conference for the encoding of over two
hundred medieval Slavic manuscripts by philologists in the Institute of
Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
The conference was partially supported by grants from the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UNESCO
Regional Office for Science and Technology for Europe (ROSTE), the Open Society
Foundation, Sofia, and the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Proceedings
Dobreva, Milena, ed. Text Variety in the Witnesses of Medieval
Texts. Proceedings of the International Workshop. Institute of
Mathematics and Informatics. Sofia, 21–23 September, 1997. Sofia:
Institute of Mathematics and Informatics. 1998. ISBN 954-9650-02-2. List of
contents available at:
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/1997_sofia/contents.html.
Description
This Thematic Block provided an opportunity for scholars from Bulgaria,
the Czech Republic, Italy, Macedonia, the UK, and the US to report on their
experiences in developing substantial research projects involving the creation
and use of electronic medieval Slavic texts, and to discuss plans for continued
individual and collaborative work.
Proceedings
All papers delivered at this panel were published in
Palaeobulgarica vol. 22, no. 2, 1998. a list of contents is
available at
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/1998_krakow/contents.html.
Abstracts of all presentations were published in Rusek, Jerzy, Janusz
Siatkowski, and Zbigniew Rusek, ed., XII Międzynarodowy Kongres
Slawistów. Kraków 27 VIII–2 IX 1998. Streszczenia
referatów i Komunikatów. Językoznawstwo. Warsaw:
Energeia. 1998. 299–303. ISBN 83-85118-78-0 (this volume), 83-85118-77-2
(all volumes).
Description
This conference continues the work of the
1995
Blagoevgrad meeting. Main topics include:
- the use of contemporary information technology to provide access to
the written cultural heritage (manuscripts, charters, early printed books,
inscriptions, etc.) of the Slavic middle ages
- the continued development of unified standards for the electronic
description, text representation, and digital preservation of medieval
manuscripts and early printed books
- the development of resources for the publication and distribution of
research materials and reports
Among the discussion points are the conversion of the
Repertorium project from SGML to XML, relative strengths and
weaknesses of DTDs and Schemata for Slavistic scholarship, transformation and
rendering issues (XSLT, CSS), indexing and querying (DBMS, native XML, and
available software solutions), image processing and linking, optical character
recognition and early texts, character encoding and fonts, and electronic
publishing. The conference includes a TEI/XML workshop, a Unicode workshop, and
demonstrations of software tools and applications. Participants are drawn from
Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany,
Italy, Macedonia, Russia, Sweden, the UK, Ukraine, and the US.
The conference was partially supported by grants from the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and with funds
provided by Sofia University, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the
Manuscripta Foundation, and the Austrian Institute for Eastern and
South-Eastern Europe.
Proceedings
Electronic and paper proceedings will be published in 2003. a list of
contents is available at:
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/2002_pomorie/contents.html.
Photographs
Matthew Driscoll contributed the following five photographs of the
conference participants, taken outside the conference hotel:
Photo
#1 |
Photo
#2 |
Photo
#3 |
Photo
#4 |
Photo
#5
Description
This roundtable will provide an opportunities for members of the
Commissions to report on the projects within the framework of the commission,
either directly as part of the Repertorium project or as part of
similar projects that employ technology and resources developed within the
Repertorium project.
Proceedings
Proceedings will be published late in 2003 or early in 2004
electronically on this site and on paper in the journal Starob"lgarska
literatura (Old Bulgarian Literature). Abstracts are
available at
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/2003_ljubljana/contents.html.
Note: This section lists only publications and
conference presentations that deal primarily and explicitly with the
Repertorium project. Proceedings of entire conferences or conference
panels associated with the project are listed under
Conferences
and Conference Proceedings, above. Publications that are associated with
the project but that deal primarily with other topics are listed under
Related Projects
and Publications, below. Publications that are not associated with the
project but that deal with similar topics are listed under
External Links
and References, below.
Publications
- Cleminson, Ralph. “Computer-Supported Processing of Slavonic
Manuscripts and Early Printed Books.” Annual of Medieval Studies
at CEU, 1996–1997. 1998. 146–48.
- Krastev, Dincho, Anissava Miltenova, and Andrey Boyadzhiev.
“Sofia Corpus of Data of Slavic Manuscripts.” Proceedings
of the Tenth Panhellenic Conference of Academic Libraries. University of
Macedonia. 15–17 October 2001. Thessaloniki: University of
Macedonia. ISBN 960-87259-0-9. 213–18.
- Miltenova, Anissava. “The Sofia Corpus of Data on Slavic
Manuscripts.” Slavic and East European Information
Resources, vol. 3, no. 2/3, 2002, pp. 81–86. (Also published in
Libraries in Open Societies: Proceedings of the Fifth International
Slavic Librarians' Conference. Ed. Harold M. Leich. Binghamton, NY:
Haworth Press. 2002. pp. 81–86.
- Miltenova, Anisava and David J. Birnbaum, ed. Medieval Slavic
Manuscripts and SGML. Problems and Perspectives. Sofia: Professor Marin
Drinov Academic Publishing House. 2000. ISBN 954-430-740-0. List of contents
and PDF offprints available at
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~repertorium/miltenova_birnbaum_2000/contents.html.
- Miltenova, Anissava, David J. Birnbaum, and Andrey Boyadzhiev.
“Computer Supported Processing of Early Slavic Manuscripts (Results and
Prospects for Textological and Linguistic Analysis).” ALLC-ACH
’96. The Joint International Conference. University of Bergen, June
25–29, 1996. 1996. 206–207.
- Miltenova, Anissava, Andrei Boyadzhiev, and Stanimir Velev.
“Computerized Manuscript Corpus Data: Results and Further
Development.” Bulgarian Studies at the Dawn of the 21st Century: a
Bulgarian-American Perspective. Sixth Joint Meeting of Bulgarian and North
American Scholars. Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, May 30–June 2, 1999.
Sofia: Gutenberg. 2000. 237–243.
Unpublished Conference Presentations
- Birnbaum, David J.
“Старая
орфография
и
современная
информатика.”
Invited presentation to the Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences, Sofia, 1995.
List of encoded manuscript descriptions (by filename) (link temporarily
disabled for file update)
Note: Projects and publications listed here are not
officially part of the Repertorium project, but are nonetheless
connected directly with it, e.g., through the use of SGML, XML, or other
resources and materials developed within the context of the
Repertorium project. Publications that are not associated with the
Repertorium project but that deal independently with similar issues
are listed below under
External Links
and References. Publications and conference presentations that deal
primarily and explicitly with the Repertorium project are listed above
under Publications
and Conference Presentations.
Project Home Pages
Publications
- Birnbaum, David J. “Standardizing Characters, Glyphs, and SGML
Entities for Encoding Early Cyrillic Writing.” Computer Standards
and Interfaces 18. 1996. 201–52.
- Birnbaum, David J., Mavis Cournane, and Peter Flynn. “Using
the TEI Writing System Declaration (WSD).” Computers and the
Humanities vol. 33, no. 1–2. 49–57.
- Cleminson, Ralph, Christine Thomas, Dilyana Radoslavova, and Andrej
Voznenskij, comp. Cyrillic Books printed before 1701 in British and Irish
Collections. a Union Catalogue. London: British Library. 2000. ISBN
0-7123-4709-7.
Unpublished Conference Presentations
- Birnbaum, David J. “Academic Applications of Unicode.”
Presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science
(ASIS), Pittsburgh, PA, 1998.
- Birnbaum, David J. “Characters, Glyphs, and Cyrillic Text
Encoding.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Association
for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), Philadelphia, PA, 1994.
- Birnbaum, David J. “Characters, Glyphs, and Writing Systems:
the Semiotics of Character Sets.” Invited presentation to the Computers
in the Humanities Users’ Group (CHUG), Scholarly Technology Group (STG),
Brown University, Providence, RI, 1995.
- Birnbaum, David J. “Information Processing Standards and Early
Cyrillic Materials.” Presented at the “Medieval Texts”
panel at the annual meeting of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic
and East European Languages (AATSEEL), Chicago, IL, 1995.
- Birnbaum, David J. “The Semiotics of Early Cyrillic Writing
Systems.” Invited presentation to the Department of Slavic Languages and
Department of Computer Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. 1997. An
earlier version was presented under the same title at the annual meeting of the
Southern Conference on Slavic Studies (SCSS), Lexington, KY, 1997.
- Unicode
for Slavic Medievalists. Invited presentation to the Electronic Publishing
for Cultural Heritage Studies Summer School, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2002. (Slide show
in PDF format.)
- The
Future of the TEI WSD. Invited presentation to the Electronic Publishing
for Cultural Heritage Studies Summer School, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2002. (Slide show
in PDF format.)
- Birnbaum, David J. and Cynthia M. Vakareliyska. “Document
Structure and Early Slavic Texts.” Presented at the “Electronic
Approaches to Slavic Texts” panel at the annual meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), Boston, MA,
1996.
- Pankl, Heather and Kevork Horissian. “Saints, Computer
Glitches, Sex, and Events: Problems Encountered During Computer Collation of
Menologies.” Presented at the Department of Russian Graduate Colloquium
on Current Issues in Slavic Research, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR,
1997.
Note: This section contains links to Internet-based and
other resources that are not related directly to the work of the
Repertorium project, but that address similar issues and concerns. See
also Related
Projects and Publications, above, for projects that are not officially part
of the Repertorium effort, but that are nonetheless connected with it
directly, e.g., through the use of SGML or XML or other resources developed as
part of the project.
Portals and General Information Resources
- Obshtezhitie
(The webpage for the study of cyrillic and glagolitic manuscripts and early
printed books, maintained by Ralph Cleminson)
- Obshtezhitie sponsors slav-mss-list, a mailing list for the study
of early Slavic manuscripts and printed books. Subscription information is
available at the Obshtezhitie web site.
- The Early
Slavic Studies Association
- The Hilandar
Research Library at the Ohio State University
Electronic Texts
Publications
- Ivanov, Sergey and Milena Dobreva. “Issues in the Development
of Digital Resources for the Southeast Medieval Studies.”
Bulgarian Studies at the Dawn of the 21st Century: a Bulgarian-American
Perspective. Sixth Joint Meeting of Bulgarian and North American Scholars.
Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, May 30–June 2, 1999. Sofia: Gutenberg.
2000. 244–251.
Fonts and other Computer Resources
