The Digital Shikshapatri: developing complex multimedia for a unique manuscript

Marilyn Deegan, Gillian Evison, David Griffiths, John Pilbeam, Harold Short

POSTER
The Digital Shikshapatri (www.shikshapatri.org.uk) was developed by the Indian Institute Library, the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and the Forced Migration Online (FMO) team at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. The technical developments were led by the FMO team, together with the Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) at King’s College London. The delivery system used to make the resultant learning resources available was the ToadHMS system from Oxford Archdigital. The project was funded by NOF-Digitise.

The Shikshapatri is a unique manuscript held by the Indian Institute Library in the Bodleian Library which is an object of great religious significance to the Swaminarayan sect of Hinduism. It is the most visited manuscript in Oxford. Given its significance, there is a wealth of supporting material available about the Shikshapatri, including translations, commentaries, illustrations, readings of the manuscript on audio and video tape, essays, etc.

Developing the Digital Shikshapatri was a particular technical challenge as the team decided from the earliest possible stage that rich multimedia was going to be of great importance so that the manuscript could be situated in a network of explanatory materials that could be accessed with ease through the web. The concept of the ‘Manuscript Study Environment’ was adopted, and this will be further refined in the future by FMO and CCH for other rich manuscript materials currently under development. The NOF-Digitise technical advisors established the standards that the project had to work to, but the technical developments were scoped and specified by the FMO team in collaboration with colleagues at CCH. Digitization of the manuscript and some of the ancillary materials was carried out by the Oxford Digital Library. Other technical activities were in the visual design of the project and its implementation in a web environment and in the design of the underlying architecture. For even a relatively small project like this one, a large and diverse team of technical developers is needed.

This poster presentation will describe the technical developments from specification to implementation with illustrations and workflows.