[Sca-cooks] Project Idea--resource for food, tableware, food plants, herbs

[Sharon Gordon]

This announcement was in the SCA newletter
SCA Today - http://scatoday.net/
"Corsair, the online research resource for the Pierpont Morgan Library,
makes available thousands
of digital images from the library's medieval and Renaissance manuscript
collection.
The images available include examples from all the major schools and are
accompanied by
descriptions."   Site at:
http://corsair.morganlibrary.org/ICAIntro/ICAintroshortdesc.htm

The library also has a search feature.  In using it, I discovered that the
images are sometimes partially described.  For instance some of the plants
or flowers in a border will be listed specifically, other times as flowers.
Items may be listed in English, Latin, or other languages.  For example
dianthus is sometimes listed as dianthus, other times as pinks, and at least
one time was present but not mentioned.

Would people from cooking, herbal, and gardening lists be interested in
going through the images again, and creating an SCA-oriented index that
names everything we can identify?  If so it might be also worth it to
involve people from other interests as well as there is clothing, armour,
architecture, a variety of scribally oriented items, animals, religious
items, landscapes, metal work, jeweled items, and lots more.

If people think this would be helpful, I think it would be helpful to
have/do:
1) A few people who could send a link for a page to specific SCA-topic
groups depending on what's on a given page.  If it has plants, it goes to
cooks/herbs/gardening.  If it also has soldiers and townspeople, it goes to
garb and armor lists.  And the scribes list could also note what colors are
used, what hand, which letters are illuminated, language of text, perhaps
subject of text.
2) Perhaps send out one page a day for consideration.  Maybe send out
Saturday and Sunday on Friday so people offline for weekend events would
have a chance to see them.  Have someone in Europe or East Coast US send out
the link each day in their morning, so it reaches the most people as early
as possible.
3) Have someone who could create a search friendly flexible expanding
database do the indexing.  Have subject indexing and SCA oriented
meta-categories like herbs, fruits, vegetables, tableware, meals, clothing
styles, armor, weapons, scribal techniques, descriptions of activities,
metal working, jewels, garden techniques, pottery, animals, decor, boats,
stonework, glassware, heraldry, etc.
4) A couple of people who could host back ups for the database with it being
remotely backed up at least once a week.
5) Liason to Pierpont Morgan if they would like to add to their descriptions
as we id more things or list them more specifically.
6) 1-3 people for each topic who collect and organize responses from people
on topical lists.  Someone to see if various topical lists are interested in
helping when a page includes their topic.
7) An email list where all items for a page are cataloged for final checking
before going to indexer.  A number of detail oriented people who could go
back over a page to make sure we got everything.  I'd suggest at least 15
people in rotation so any one person would only have 2 pages a month to be
responsible for.
8) Someone who can edit for language consistency and create synonyms for
index.
Man/Men/Male
Dianthus/Pinks
Both jug/pitcher and vase when a pitcher shaped jug gets used as a vase.

There is a ton of good detailed images in this collection which would be
useful across a wide spectrum of SCA interests.  Anyone want to go on this
treasure hunt and help organize the booty?

Sharon
gordonse at one.net