Since the beginning of Textus invisibilis in 2010, a database has always been the project’s final goal. As of 2019, I have started conveying the insight on fragments gathered in the first, explorative project phases into a database design. The foundational insight for the database design is the awareness of the complex nature of the fragment, especially the type which constitutes the majority of our items: fragments from parchment manuscripts which were dismembered after the invention of print to be re-functionalized in Early modern handicraft practices such as bookbinding. As databasing is essentially a matter of knowledge organization, the way we describe such objects has to reflect the changing contexts of use and value-giving: we have to approach them both from an ontological and an epistemological perspective. In other words, the database output has to facilitate answers to both questions: What is a fragment? And: How can I attain scientific knowledge of a fragment and fragmentation? The starting point in Textus invisibilis is considering fragments, regardless of their origin, as we find them in their present state: as cultural heritage objects preserved in specific holding environments. These are private or public archives, libraries, and museums. Each of these environments is conceptually organized as a domain with its domain-specific controlled vocabulary. In Textus invisibilis, fragments are described which are currently held in all three types of institutions; furthermore, these items were dismembered from manuscripts of different types both from the area of diplomatics and codicology: diplomas, charters, archival registers, and codices with, say, literary, philosophical, liturgical, and other content. If a musical instrument preserved in a museum contains a stripe from a liturgical codex re-used as linking material in its joints, describing this stripe (fragment) has to take into account all three knowledge organization domains. Consequently, in Textus invisibilis, the describing template for each fragment is organized into three main areas. The first area pertains to the institution holding the fragment. This area uses the controlled vocabulary of the institution domain – be it a museum, archive, or library – and recurs to describing metadata standards from that domain to approach the fragment. The second area focuses on the fragmentation circumstances, and on the historical relationship between the fragment and its host object. It contains information on the fragmentation time, how the fragment was re-used, its position on the host object, the date it was re-used, and the persons involved in the recycling (such as the commissioner, etc.) and other evidence. This area integrates metadata standards and controlled vocabulary from the three domains into one interoperable pattern.
The third area pertains to internal and external evidence of the fragment as an item derived from a larger documental object. The focus is on its relation with the original manuscript. The controlled vocabulary and describing metadata standards here are taken from the cultural heritage domains of library and archival science, as well as from the academic disciplines involved in the study of diplomatic documents and manuscript or printed books: codicology, musicology, palaeography, philology, etc. Between 2022 and 2023, after an ENCODE training workshop in Oslo, I prototyped the description template in the form of a relational database on MySql. As of January 2025, a pilot databasing project focused on a collection of ca. 310 detached fragments is being carried out within an agreement between the University of Urbino and the State Archive of Urbino. The research team includes Uniurb academics and the personnel of the State Archive. Our aim is to overcome the present lack of interoperability between the three domains.