Werner Oechslin Library Foundation

The ‘fathers of the Internet’ and developers of the TCP/IP, Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn, recently warned computer users to take care of their digital documents. Because there is no solution yet for their long-time preservation, Cerf formulated his warning as: “If there are photos you really care about, print them out.” As Google’s Vice President he knows what he is talking about and is working on a solution called “digital vellum”: It shall be able to emulate document formats, software, operating systems and computer hardware. This paper discusses some problems with this suggestion in the light of the technical development especially from the point of view of the Digital Humanities: Obviously and – thanks to the work of Cerf and Kahn – the typical document (and the system of paradigms it is based on) is fading away, as well as dedicated software or clearly distinguishable computers used to work with it. For a short-term solution, the consequence can only be to avoid complicated and non-free software solutions, even though they may have beautiful and easily usable advantages. For a long-term solution, a basic, institutional shift in the fundamental paradigms of scientific research and its documentation is needed.

The Origin of Scientific Notions in the Circle of the Roman Accademia della Virtù around 1550. Between c. 1537 and 1555 a group of humanists, clerics, architects and philologists known as the so-called Accademia della Virtù got together in Rome to work on a program which was formulated in a letter by the Sienese humanist Claudio Tolomei in 1542 and published in 1547. Starting out with the intention to understand the only surviving antique book on architecture and architectural theory - Vitruvius' De architectura libri decem - the program describes a series of 24 books, eleven containing the classical text and its translation with commentaries, 13 books systematically illustrating and documenting all known and available material remains from Roman antiquity. This program for a scientific classical archaeology in a modern sense was not only intended to serve the intellectual curiosity of some humanist antiquarians but to help architects and their patrons to develop a new architecture of the same high quality as the idealized Roman examples. To achieve this practical as well as theoretical goal it was obviously necessary to re-create the antique vocabulary of architecture and its rules as well as to unify the contemporary usage of notions and norms in a canon. The first results of this project seem to be the In decem Libros M. Vitruvii Pollionis de Architectura Annotationes by Guillaume Philandrier (Rome, 1544) - up to this day a very valuable explanation of ambiguous parts in the Vitruvian text. Until the 1980s, it was believed that this book was the only outcome of the ambitious project; but then two codices of drawings after antique reliefs were identified as preparations for one of the other 23 volumes - and, because of their systematic approach, regarded as the 'first systematic archaeological book'. Now it seems that there are some other corpora of manuscripts and drawings documenting antique artifacts that should be regarded as results of the Accademia's work, too, showing antique buildings, inscriptions and coins. Other results of the unfinished project may be the theoretical and practical works of the two most influencial architects of the sixteenth century: Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola and Andrea Palladio.

À première vue, une bibliothèque semble d’abord servir la conservation et la « consolidation du savoir ». Par son regard tourné vers une tradition grandiose, elle est sans nul doute aussi une institution cruciale de la mémoire collective. Et cependant il suffit qu’un usager, ou encore qu’un lecteur entre en jeu, pour que cette situation se voie aussitôt radicalement changée et que tout soit en mouvement ! La configuratio et la collocatio, le classement des livres et leur contenu (ordonné), tout se trouve déterminé à partir de là dans la médiation au lecteur et à son appareil de perception sensible, son savoir, sa mémoire et les formes de ceux-ci. Bibliothèque et usagers constituent un tout dans lequel les avantages de l’économie, les raccourcis les plus efficaces et les fulgurances contribuent de manière déterminante à en faire une machina dynamique, ou plus exactement une « machine intellectuelle » avec laquelle nous cherchons à saisir et à comprendre le monde.