366
21.2 Gregorian Archives Texts Editing (GATE) and Angelo
Secchi Papers
GATE, a collaborative web platform launched by APUG in 2016,
2
has been utilized
to develop our project on the Secchi papers. GATE was created to respond to some
of the needs of APUG regarding digitalization and access to digitalized documents.
Like many archives, in the past 10–15 years, APUG has had to deal with numerous
digital reproductions of documents requested by researchers. While it was relatively
easy to produce this large number of digital images, there was never a chance to
make them available to the entire research community.
In recent years, however, many very remarkable ‘browsing of images’ websites
have been launched, such as the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project,
3
DigiVatLib
4
and Gallica.
5
These projects allow one to access millions of images, but
they don’t provide an ‘active’ environment where scholars can contribute to the
addition and improvement of information. The APUG goal is different, and it
attempts to promote a kind of scholarly research in which the archive is not seen
merely as an ‘information supermarket’ and thus a contributor to the so-called information overload; such an approach does not create knowledge, but an indefinite
amount of information that cannot be managed by anyone. Instead, with GATE,
APUG aims to create a digital tool open to the scholarly (and sometime also nonscholarly) collaboration in which each person can contribute with his/her expertise
to the enrichment of the content, metadata and transcriptions of its documentation
(Fig. 21.1).
From a technical point of view, GATE is a collaborative online web platform
based on MediaWiki,
6
a software developed by Wikimedia Foundation and used in
all its projects, such as Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiversity.
7
MediaWiki is open
source and maintained by a very active community of volunteer developers. It has
several features that are worth citing here:
• A highly customizable environment. Beyond the core code, hundreds of extensions
8
may be added to increase the MediaWiki functions, and the core code
itself also has many settings that allow one to easily create the most suitable
environment for any kind of project. For example, one of the possibilities that
GATE offers (not found in all MediaWiki websites) is to provide a transcription
tool that allows users to transcribe documents while having their digital
2 https://gate.unigre.it
3 http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
4 https://digi.vatlib.it
5 https://gallica.bnf.fr
6 https://www.mediawiki.org
7 https://wikimediafoundation.org
8 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Extensions
L. Mancini and M. M. Morales
21.2 Gregorian Archives Texts Editing (GATE) and Angelo
Secchi Papers
GATE, a collaborative web platform launched by APUG in 2016,
2
has been utilized
to develop our project on the Secchi papers. GATE was created to respond to some
of the needs of APUG regarding digitalization and access to digitalized documents.
Like many archives, in the past 10–15 years, APUG has had to deal with numerous
digital reproductions of documents requested by researchers. While it was relatively
easy to produce this large number of digital images, there was never a chance to
make them available to the entire research community.
In recent years, however, many very remarkable ‘browsing of images’ websites
have been launched, such as the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project,
3
DigiVatLib
4
and Gallica.
5
These projects allow one to access millions of images, but
they don’t provide an ‘active’ environment where scholars can contribute to the
addition and improvement of information. The APUG goal is different, and it
attempts to promote a kind of scholarly research in which the archive is not seen
merely as an ‘information supermarket’ and thus a contributor to the so-called information overload; such an approach does not create knowledge, but an indefinite
amount of information that cannot be managed by anyone. Instead, with GATE,
APUG aims to create a digital tool open to the scholarly (and sometime also nonscholarly) collaboration in which each person can contribute with his/her expertise
to the enrichment of the content, metadata and transcriptions of its documentation
(Fig. 21.1).
From a technical point of view, GATE is a collaborative online web platform
based on MediaWiki,
6
a software developed by Wikimedia Foundation and used in
all its projects, such as Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiversity.
7
MediaWiki is open
source and maintained by a very active community of volunteer developers. It has
several features that are worth citing here:
• A highly customizable environment. Beyond the core code, hundreds of extensions
8
may be added to increase the MediaWiki functions, and the core code
itself also has many settings that allow one to easily create the most suitable
environment for any kind of project. For example, one of the possibilities that
GATE offers (not found in all MediaWiki websites) is to provide a transcription
tool that allows users to transcribe documents while having their digital
2 https://gate.unigre.it
3 http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
4 https://digi.vatlib.it
5 https://gallica.bnf.fr
6 https://www.mediawiki.org
7 https://wikimediafoundation.org
8 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Extensions
L. Mancini and M. M. Morales