January 15, 2025
The Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine (WHL) and Digital Library Services (DLS) have been awarded a $100,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Research and Development Grant. “Making Meaning from Movement: Piloting a Digital Workflow for Interactive Flap Books” will develop a workflow for digitizing and hosting interactive flap books in online digital collections environments.
Led by Emily Beck (Associate Curator, WHL), Theresa Berger, (Head of DLS), and Lois Hendrickson (Curator, WHL), the project will draw from WHL’s extensive collection of sixteenth to twentieth century flap anatomies to create a digitization workflow and pilot a hosting platform that centers user experience and prioritizes interactivity in digital collections.
“This is an incredible opportunity to provide greater access to some of the Wangensteen’s most valued materials as well as develop a system for ongoing digitization,” says Beck. “Because of the ways they were constructed as interactive objects, flap anatomies are both very fragile and extremely challenging to digitize. This project will hopefully create a way of digitizing these texts that will prioritize their interactivity, which will give users a more true-to-life experience of the objects as well as prioritize ongoing preservation of materials that are too fragile to be handled frequently. We already use these materials in teaching and research, supporting courses that examine histories of health and art history and researchers who study how people learned and communicated about the body in the past. We’re excited to be able to extend the reach of these materials in different ways, from ensuring that students who can’t come to campus can interact with them to giving researchers ways of accurately comparing our flap anatomies with those in other cultural heritage institutions.”
The NEH received 33 eligible applications, and the UMN Libraries is one of 6 awardees this cycle.
In addition to developing workflows for capturing fragile flap materials, the project will also pilot a hosting platform that allows users to “move” through flap books as if they were turning the flaps themselves.
“There is real possibility to push boundaries and explore new ground in digital collections,” says Berger. “Most digitization and presentation work relies on a one-to-one presentation method—one photograph per page, with users clicking a button to load or ‘turn’ the next page. Instead, this project proposes having several photographs for all of the flaps on a single digital page, and developing a method for users to move through those flaps with features that mimic the physical turning or revealing of the flaps to show what is underneath. This would be a new way of experiencing digital surrogates and thinking about digitization in cultural heritage.”
In response to the deep subject-matter and technical expertise required, the project leaders have assembled a multidisciplinary team made up of software developers, animation experts, and digital photographers. Regular consultation by digital humanists, flapbook scholars, and historians will also inform the direction of the online platform’s user interface.
From incubation to award
This award builds on a 2024 Incubator Grant from the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Advanced Study awarded to interdisciplinary teams exploring new initiatives as they seek external funding and clarifying project ideas.
“This initial grant was essential, allowing the team to broaden the scope of the project and consider potential solutions and potential partners,” says Lois Hendrickson.
With support from the Wangensteen Historical Library and Digital Library Services, this project will be administratively housed in the Institute for Advanced Study, a systemwide University hub for interdisciplinary collaboration, which reports to the executive vice president and provost.
Contact
- Theresa Berger, Head of Digital Library Services: [email protected]
- Emily Beck, Associate Curator, Wangensteen Historical Library: [email protected]
- Abby Travis, Communications Manager, Institute for Advanced Study: [email protected]
Image: Nicolini da Sabbio, G. A. (1539). Viscerum hoc est interiorum corporis humani partium. per Ioan. Ant. de Nicolinis de Sabio, expensis uetro Io. Baptistae Pederzani. Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine.