We are delighted to announce that Angela Griffith and Philip McEvansoneya’s Drawn to the page; Irish artists and Illustration 1830-1930, and Andrew Johnstone’s Sources of English Sacred Music (SESM) were selected last spring from a open competition for innovative digital projects at TCD.
These projects will be supported throughout the 2012-13 academic year by a team from across College — from the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science, the College Secretary’s Office, the Dean of Research’s Office, IS Services, the Library, and the Vice Provost’s Office. We are delighted to be working on these projects — from consulting on metadata and project management to supporting database creation, web design, and development of learning components. We look forward to sharing these completed projects with you in the Spring.
Drawn to the page; Irish artists and Illustration 1830-1930 is being created with support of the History of Art Department, TCD, TRIARC and Trinity College Library. This project comprises a digital database of published texts illustrated by Irish artists, sourced from TCD library holdings.
The database will catalogue some of the finest illustrated texts from this period and its purpose is to facilitate a greater awareness of Irish artists’ contribution to the practise of book illustration and to encourage wider research on the subject. As a digital resource, users will be able to view multiple examples from the same publication, and others, simultaneously, allowing for critical visual analysis of the material, which to date has not been undertaken. Furthermore, due to the fragile nature of some of the material, displaying the material digitally is an important conservation measure whilst still providing access to academic and public audiences.
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The database Sources of English Sacred Music (SESM) will provide online public access to a comprehensive inventory of the 1,000 or so manuscripts and fifty printed collections that transmit the vast legacy of sacred music by British composers active between c.1485 and c.1650. This repertory comprises approximately 4,000 individual pieces, by figures of international standing such as Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, and by dozens of their less well known contemporaries, many of whom are still not represented in print.
The source data was originally published in two printed supplements (1972, 1987) to the series Early English Church Music (EECM), an ongoing research project established by The British Academy in 1961. Once digitised, the data will be searchable also on a per-source basis, enabling the instant compilation of contents tables that can be verified against microfilms, online images, and the sources themselves. TCD undergraduates will have the opportunity to participate in the verification process via a module to be offered as part of the Sophister curriculum for SH and TSM music in 2013/14.
The primary source data is being made available for this project by kind permission of The British Academy and the editorial committee of EECM.