MyManuskrip (Malaysian Manuscripts): a Digital Library

  • Host: University of Malaya. Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology. Digital Library Research Group
  • Other institutions involved: Our partners are the Centre of Malay Letter, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka Library, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the University of Malaya Library, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • URL: http://mymanuskrip.fsktm.um.edu.my
  • Main language: English

General description: The objectives of MyManuskrip are: (a) to find out the current state of manuscript collection management and practices in selected libraries; (b) to identify the problems faced by manuscript repositories; (c) to study the metadata schema used by repositories to describe their manuscript collections, and (d) to identify a suitable open source digital library to support a digital library of manuscripts. The study gather qualitative data from an open ended questionnaire distributed to five manuscript librarians. Cataloguing practices by the manuscript repositories are observed and the open source digital library Greenstone was studied for suitability. The information gathered and observed helped determine the requirements of a digital library that empowers repositories in building, storing, preserving and disseminating information about manuscript collections is developed. Users are also empowered with better access options. Malay manuscripts are found in the Malay World, that is, the Malay Archipelago of Malaya, Borneo, Sumatra, Riau, and Indonesia. These items can also be found in repositories and Museums in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Detailed description of these manuscripts becomes essential to distinguish between the many versions of a single title held in various collections within Malaysia and abroad. No two manuscripts are alike. All these factors make cataloguing of manuscripts a challenging task. MyManuskrip aims to support a more detailed description and categorizations. It was found that the TEI meta tags are not found in the tag sets available in Greenstone. The TEI tag sets are added and used in the Greenstone digital library environment.

Implementation description: This project used a selection of the TEI metadata schema indicated by the tool ROMA. The TEI ROMA tool basically contains 63 fields, and MyManuskrip adopts 25 fields to describe Malay manuscripts.

NO PROPOSED LABELS DESCRIPTIONS

  1. Title: A title given to the resource.

  2. AltTitle: Another or alternative name the manuscript is known as, or nickname

  3. Shelf Mark: Call number, shelf mark, accession number to identify the manuscript

  4. Creator: A person primarily responsible for making the content of the

manuscript, the copier

  1. Category: Controlled terms that indicate a category of the manuscript (Hikayat,

Syair, Historiography, Religious Text, etc)

  1. Repository: Name of library or repository within which the manuscript is held

  2. OrigDate: Contain any form of date, used to identify the date of origin for a

manuscript or manuscript part, date begin, date ending

  1. OrigPlace: Place of origin for a manuscript

  2. Dimensions: Contains a dimensional specification

  3. Foliation: Numbering system used to count the leaves or pages

  4. Layout: Description about ruling techniques, layout of text on the pages

  5. TextLang: Names of languages used in the manuscript

  6. Material: A word or phrase describing the form a manuscripts are stored

  7. Condition: Description of the physical conditions of the manuscript

  8. DecoNote: Informative description about the decoration or illustration available

  9. Support: Contains a description of the materials, etc which make up the physical support for the written part of a manuscript

  10. Surrogate: Describe the digital or photographic representation of the manuscript

  11. Incipit: Opening words of the text proper

  12. Explicit: Ending words or phrases of a text

  13. Subjects: Describes the intellectual content of a manuscript

  14. Summary: Brief summary of the content provided by the cataloguer

  15. Watermark: A word of phrase describing a watermarks identified in the pape

  16. Source: Describes the original source that contains information about the

manuscript

  1. Acquisition: Indicates acquisition history

  2. Additional: Additional bibliographic sources related to the manuscript

Related resources: Zainab, A.N., A. Abrizah, M.R. Hilmi. 2009. What a Digital Library of Malay Manuscripts Should Support: An Exploratory Needs Assessment, Libri [Accepted for publication for 2009]

Contact:

Zainab A.N.

University of Malaya

Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology

Digital Library Group

50603 Kuala Lumpur

MALAYSIA.

Email: zainab@um.edu.my