Hackathon 2018

The Hackathon in 2018 was organised jointly by the Cambridge University Library and the QMUL School of History in the final week of April 2018.

The week brought together 13 former participants of the Digital Editing of Medieval Manuscripts postgraduate training programme from institutions in the Czech Republic, Italy and France. They built prototype web apps using manuscripts from the Cambridge University Library Special Collections, going from concept to execution in just one week. We focused on the theme of ‘glosses’, considering how to explore the complexities of commentary and marginalia.

Blogs, tweets, and video

Check out these links to learn more about what we achieved and our reflections on the week:

Hacking the Middle Ages – a blog post from Dr Chris Sparks at QMUL.

Codices, coding and cake: a medieval manuscript hackathon – a blog post from Dr Suzanne Paul Keeper of Manuscripts and University Archives at Cambridge University Library.

Tweets from the week were collected with the hashtag #camdemm.

A video retrospective of the week is available on YouTube.

Web Prototypes from the Teams

Links to online prototypes that the three teams made during the Hackathon.

‘The Lombards’

A teaching tool, exploring a gloss on the Psalms for univeristy-level students and teachers

‘The Lukes’

A teaching tool, exploring manuscript composition and construction for life-long learners, using a MS of the Gospel of Luke

‘The Beegees’

An app for textual scholars to explore manuscript glosses (NB – this prototype is non-interactive).