Atla Annual 2024

This presentation addresses ways to engage students while teaching the history of the book within a theological library context. The first part of the presentation considers the importance of teaching the history of the book in a theological or religious education setting. Most of the skills and trades involved in bookmaking have been forgotten today, thus incorporating some of the basic principles of book production and printing illuminates the cultural contexts in which books were made. The second part of the presentation looks at tools and technologies that are useful for teaching the history of the book. In addition to books or manuscripts, this includes traditional printing equipment (e.g., printing press, type, composing sticks, and ink balls) as well as new technology that can replicate or illustrate aspects of the printing process (CNC woodcuts, 3d printing, and photopolymer plates). The third section addresses hands-on activities that demonstrate various aspects of bookmaking, such as pulling a print on a printing press and creating an octavo book from a printed sheet. The approaches covered in this presentation connect the old world of books with the growing movement in libraries to be spaces for creative thinking and innovation.

Last year, Atla launched a new online, open access Institutional Repository (IR) for theological schools (ir.atla.com). In this Listen & Learn session, audience members will have the opportunity to learn about this IR platform and IRs in general from the librarian who manages Atla’s IR as well as two library directors who have used Atla’s platform to build electronic theses & dissertations repositories (ETDs) for their institutions. Christy Karpinski, the Atla Digital Initiatives Librarian, will provide an overview of Atla’s IR platform and its capabilities. Yasmine Abou-El-Kheir and John Dechant—Library Directors at the Chicago Theological Seminary and Meadville Lombard Theological School, respectively—will detail their experiences in subscribing to the platform and using it to advance their schools’ institutional goals and mission statements. The three presenters will show how Atla’s IR looks and functions, as well as how it can improve the impact of students’ scholarship and the visibility of the institution. Audience members will learn strategies for successfully proposing an IR to school leaders and develop insights into different workflows for building and maintaining an IR or ETD.

Optical character recognition (OCR) tools such as Transkribus and perhaps also artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT can improve and accelerate the process of creating a digital edition of a historical document. This presentation uses the previously undiscovered 1529 practica of Anton Brelochs to critically evaluate how well AI tools can help. Questions to be addressed include the following:
- How well can ChatGPT correct errors in the OCR transcription or identify possible typos in the original document?
- How well can ChatGPT provide a base diplomatic and critical texts and literal and idiomatic translations for use in the digital edition?
- How does providing context (i.e., using prompts to give ChatGPT background information about the document’s genre and time period) affect ChatGPT’s functionality?