Logos 2024: Hosting Student Seminars in the Digital Imaging Lab

One of the primary goals of a museum is to educate. One learning opportunity Museum of the Bible provides is Logos, an annual program run by Scholarship & Christianity in Oxford (SCIO), which is the UK subsidiary of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. 

Logos is a two-week residential summer program that holds workshops and lectures on biblical languages and textual studies. Co-directed by Dr. Stanley P. Rosenberg and Dr. Jonathan Kirkpatrick, the workshop host alternates between Oxford and Museum of the Bible. Dr. Rosenberg says,

"The team at SCIO have been delighted and grateful to run this project since 2013, working in close cooperation with Museum of the Bible. This valued partnership has had outsized impact supporting and contributing to the deep formation of a new generation of scholars." 

Logos participants range from undergraduate to graduate and can come from universities from all over the globe. Seminars cater to various ancient languages, such as Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic, while lectures by scholars focus on issues pertaining to ancient texts. This year, the museum added a new seminar hosted in the Digital Imaging Lab. 

Figure 1: Digital Imaging Specialist Rebeccah Swerdlow hosting students in the Digital Imaging Lab. Image © Museum of the Bible, 2024. All rights reserved.

Every day of the conference, a new group of students entered the lab where Digital Imaging Specialist Rebeccah Swerdlow led a seminar on the digitization of cultural heritage. Students and their professors learned different methodological approaches to cultural heritage digitization, such as object reproduction, content reproduction, and artist’s intent. Once they understood the different approaches, they were introduced to Esther. 

Figure 2 and 3: Closeups of a Torah Scroll placed upon Museum of the Bible's Torah Scroll Rig. Image © Museum of the Bible, 2024. All rights reserved.

“Esther” is the affectionate nickname for Museum of the Bible’s Torah Scroll Rig (TSR). After learning about her history and multispectral imaging (MSI) capabilities, a volunteer got to photograph a section of a nineteenth-century Torah Scroll from Prague. Discussions ranged from Esther’s conservational and curatorial uses to how these photographs can eventually be accessed for scholarly research all over the world. Students were able to explore different Lookup Tables, or filters, to see how museum specialists can use this technology to uncover redacted text or symbols, detect light damage, and differentiate between different writing media. For many, it was the first time they experienced forensics and history combined. 

After getting to know Esther, the groups met Bessie. Our BC100, known to many as “Bessie,” digitizes the museum’s bound material, which ranges from Bibles to sermon manuscripts to notes from historic pastors. The groups learned how photography sessions are prepared and volunteered to push a few buttons themselves. Different books were selected for each class depending on the language they study; Greek classes photographed pages from the Ussher Gospels, a seventeenth-century two-volume copy of the Gospels in Greek, for example. After taking photos, students and professors leaned close to the screens to see their high-resolution images and discuss their uses and importance. 

Digitization opens more doors than ever before in the world of cultural preservation. The participants at the Logos conference were able to see firsthand how MSI and book cradles serve various museum goals—conservation, education, exhibits, and research. Each student and professor agreed that the digitization of a museum’s collections is making the pursuit of knowledge accessible in ways it has never been before. One of the primary goals of any museum is to educate, and thanks to digitization, Museum of the Bible can achieve that goal in every corner of the globe. 

By Rebeccah Swerdlow, Digital Imaging Specialist

Published July 25, 2024