Kiosque illuminates world of medieval manuscripts

14th century documents can be viewed at extraordinarily high resolution

A new exhibition of medieval manuscripts at the Royal Armouries in Leeds showcases a technology that lets visitors examine digital pictures of the manuscripts in fine detail.

Normally the manuscripts, which include Froissart’s Chronicles of the Hundred Years War, are available only on special request to researchers, as they have to be preserved in special conditions.

But by using Kiosque, an application developed by Tribal in partnership with the University of Sheffield, visitors can zoom in and out of the digital pictures via a touchscreen. The pictures are accompanied by English translations of the stories they tell.

Kiosque is an extension of virtual vellum, a technology developed by the university to make it easier to view digitised manuscripts. Peter Ainsworth, professor and head of French at the University of Sheffield, said: “It’s a multimedia package that allows you to explore images of manuscripts at extraordinarily high resolution with no loss of definition.”

The technology “has something for everybody”, said Ainsworth. “Scholars can look at six complete virtual manuscripts and flick through them from one end to the other, but there are also stories from 14th century texts translated into modern English ­ there’s a lot of colour and fun.”

Ainsworth said that the 21st century knowledge transfer team was a successor to the original knowledge transfer team, consisting of “author, tanner, shepherd, gilder, painter” that created the manuscripts.

Ainsworth said Kiosque could have a wide range of applications: “It’s showing manuscripts at the moment, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t show pamphlets, posters, insects ­ anything you like.”
www.sheffield.ac.uk/hri/projects/projectpages/jeanfroissart.html