Polly Duxfield

This thesis accompanies the digital edition of the Crónica particular de San Fernando, and includes a rationale for and an explanation of many of the implications of the decisions taken in the preparation of this edition. The edition is used as a case study for the digital editing of medieval prose in Castilian at the present time. To this end, there is an in-depth examination of the history, context and current situation of the digital editing of medieval texts, focussing specifically on prose, and in particular prose in Castilian. The text and context of the Crónica particular de San Fernando are also studied, to inform the preparation of its digital edition.

My central thesis is that the decisions made when preparing a digital edition should take into account the perceived needs of edition users, including both contemporary users and, as far as is possible, future users. These decisions should be informed by the nature of the text itself, its context, and transmission, as these will affect how and by whom the edition is used. They should also be informed by an understanding of how digital editions differ from their print counterparts, in both preparation and usage.

Title: Editing the Estoria de Espanna: practical implications of collaborative editing using crowdsourcing

‘Estoria de Espanna Digital’ is an AHRC-funded project based at the University of Birmingham, led by Dr Aengus Ward. Our principal aim is to produce a fully-collatable digital edition of the medieval Hispanic chronicle, the Estoria de Espanna, which will be freely available online. The electronic edition will comprise transcriptions of five of the forty known extant witnesses of the text, with manuscripts dating from the 1270s to the fifteenth century. The transcription process we are using is collaborative, with seven members of the project team as well as crowdsourced volunteers. As with all collaboratively edited texts, such an approach has practical implications to provide a level of consistency and quality control as to ensure the transcriptions produced by all transcribers are of a sufficient standard and homogeneity that they can be useful for the collation system. For in-house transcribers a set of Transcription Guidelines and regular team meetings can provide this, but in the case of crowdsourced volunteers more strategies and resources are required.

This paper will examine some of the practical implications we have encountered in the first year of having volunteers play an active role in the transcription process of the Estoria Digital project. The implications discussed will include training needs, strategies for moderation, acknowledgement and feedback of crowdsourcers’ work, and the creation and maintenance of an atmosphere of shared scholarship goals, towards which volunteers of all abilities play a valued role. I will also reflect on how our first year’s experiences of having active involvement from volunteers have matched our expectations following the launch of crowdsourcing in late 2014, and will suggest ways in which the project’s use of crowdsourcing can evolve and continue to improve in the future.

The Estoria de Espanna manuscripts date from 1274 to 1344 and chronicle history from a Castilian perspective from the origins of Spain to the death of king Fernando III (1252). The first recensions of the Estoria were written under the patronage of king Alfonso X the Learned (reigned 1252-1284) and are representative of a major development in the promotion of the reformed (and still reforming) orthography of the region, following the introduction of the Carolingian style of pronunciation to non-Catalan Iberia between 1080 and 1200. This reformed orthography came to be known as Castilian, and the renaming signifies a conceptual separation between Latin and Romance, which until the arrival of the Carolingian reform had been unnecessary.

The aim of the paper I am proposing is to make visible the unconsciously articulated perceptions of the Alfonsine court of the cultural identity of speakers of Castilian using the Estoria manuscripts as a primary corpus. In order to uncover these underlying attitudes in the Estoria I will carry out searches of the electronic concordances of the digitally edited manuscripts to analyse any changes in usage of the term castellano (Castilian), or patterns in the instances of occurrences. For the purposes of comparison, further corpora will be examined: namely, the Lapidario, an Alfonsine book on medicine and magic, and the six recensions of the General Estoria, Alfonso’s other historical manuscripts.

The concordance searches display a change in the usage of the term castellano over the course of the manuscripts: from a linguistic marker of orthographic differentiation from Latin to a cultural marker of linguistic provenance and identity. Through looking at changing patterns of instances and usage of the castellano in the Estoria de Espanna we can observe the emergence and development of the notion of a Castilian identity and speech community which is otherwise not consciously articulated and of which the Alfonsine court and speakers at the time may not have been consciously aware.

This article contains a translation into Modern English and discussion of one chapter from the Crónica particular de San Fernando, a fourteenth-century chronicle originally written in medieval Castilian prose, detailing the life of King Ferdinand III of Castile-Leon (r. 1217/1232 – 1252). The chapter tells of the siege and conquest of Cordoba, a key victory for the Christians in the Reconquista campaign, and a sorry loss for the Moors. The article first gives a short description of the chapter and the methodology behind the translation, and then presents the translated chapter in full.

Using the Estoria Digital as a case study, I examine some practical issues that may be encountered in collaborative digital editing projects of medieval texts: I describe some of the practical issues we encountered when creating the Estoria Digital, and some of the strategies we employed to overcome them. Focussing on transcription, collation, and regularization, I propose a model for their effective completion by more than one person. Finally, I consider if collaborative digital editing might be a misnomer in this context: what do we mean by 'collaborative' and 'editing' in the collaborative digital editing of medieval texts?

This paper examines the specific strategies for recruitment and retention of volunteer transcribers in use in two
collaborative transcription projects: Transcribe Bentham (University College, London) and the Estoria de Espanna
Digital Project (University of Birmingham).
The aim of the paper is to review the strategies used by Transcribe Bentham, a more mature crowdsourced electronic
transcription project, with a view to informing the strategies put into place in the Estoria project, which has started
transcribing using crowdsourcing more recently. The paper discusses the difficulties faced by crowdsourced electronic
transcription projects and how these have been and are being resolved in these two projects.
The difficulties discussed include the complexity of the palaeography involved, the necessity of tagging transcriptions
using XML, the requirement to moderate and carry out quality-control of volunteer-produced transcriptions, and the
creation of an atmosphere of camaraderie amongst staff-members and crowdsourcers, many of whom have never, and
will never meet face-to-face. The findings may be useful for other collaborative electronic transcription projects and will
inform and shape the way the Estoria project continues to use strategies to raise levels of recruitment and retention of
crowdsourced transcribers. An earlier version of this paper was first presented at the 2nd Annual Estoria de Espanna
Digital Project Colloquium, Magdalen College, University of Oxford, 14-15th November 2014.

Using the Estoria Digital as a case study, I examine some practical issues that may be encountered in collaborative digital editing projects of medieval texts: I describe some of the practical issues we encountered when creating the Estoria Digital, and some of the strategies we employed to overcome them. Focussing on transcription, collation, and regularization, I propose a model for their effective completion by more than one person. Finally, I consider if collaborative digital editing might be a misnomer in this context: what do we mean by collaborative and editing in the collaborative digital editing of medieval texts?