Image-based editing and commentary on Joachim Camerarius' Symbolorum et Emblematum
View the Project on GitHub Furman-Editions-In-Progress/camerarius
The Digital Camerarius Project is an Undergraduate Research Project at Furman University. It started in 2019 with the goal of transcribing, annotating and identifying references to Classical Greek and Latin works in Joachim Camerarius’ Symbola et Emblemata. The final deliverable of the project will include a reader-friendly version of the text with transcription, annotations and translation.
View the project’s website at https://furman-editions-in-progress.github.io/camerarius/.
View a complete scan of the 1668 Edition through the Münchener Digitale Bibliothek.
Joachim Camerarius the Younger was a German botanist, zoologist, and humanist scholar. He first published the Symbola et Emblemata in 1590 but republished later updated editions in 1595, 1596, and 1604. His son Ludwig published a posthumous edition of this work adding aquatic animals and reptiles. The 1668 edition is divided into four “centuria”, each focusing on a specific category. Centuria I is an entirely botanical piece, centuria II focuses on animals, centuria III on birds, reptiles and insects and centuria IV on aquatic animals and reptiles. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Camerarius_the_Younger
The project originally started as a part of the Homer Multitext Project, using the CITE Architecture and related technologies to transcribe the text.
As of 2024, the project has transitioned on Transkribus. For an overview of our transcription tags and guidelines, see the Guidelines in this repository.
In 2024, we received funding within the framework of the HERMES-Forschungsstudienförderung, to create Machina Emblematica, a RAG experiment for multimodal information retrieval. This project will enable us to expand the digital edition of Camerarius with AI-supported answer generation, facilitating access to the content and exploration of the interplay between image and text.
The individual pages of Camerarius can be seen through the HMT Image Transcription Tool:
To review past transcriptions available in the “data” folder of this repository, see How to review past transcriptions.
This project was made possible with the continuing support of the Furman Office for Undergraduate Research, and with the generous sponsorship of the Furman Humanities Center.
If you have questions about this project, get in touch with Chiara Palladino.