Gudrun Gleba: Urban Accounting in a Medieval Town – Road Work Ahead for Editors. Abstract # 12 (random order)

“Items to show, information to read, things to point out as special:
Costs on wall repairing, on entertainment by jogglers and minstrels, on caring for the town’s orphans … The councillors‘ tasks were numerous and those keeping their eyes on the town’s financial issues were diligent to take exact notes on receipts and expenditure, on money received and money spent, thereby helping – and controlling – each other during the process of arranging all the bits and pieces, all the scraps that had accumulated during a year into an intelligible order, literally booking all items and sums that had come up. Once an acceptable sequence of entries had been established this order was often followed for years or even decades though some items and some sums might change, some might be deleted and other might be added. How can we make this visible – the ordered and well arranged sequences as well as the small, but sometimes significant changes? The various hands, the special layout of the pages, the continuous repetitions going along with slight differences? How can and how must the old school of editing be improved by digital means, be it TEI or others – especially when it comes to enormous amount of data such as in account books which, more likely than not, has impeded a broader edition of this type of sources so far?
Belonging to the older generation of scholars I would, rather than offering digital solutions, offer to outline some of these problems – presenting the late medieval urban account book of Osnabrück (Westphalia) as example – and ask young scholars for media support.”
Gudrun Gleba (Universität Rostock)
Presentation: Oct 24,8.50-9.10 a.m., University of Regensburg, Großer Sitzungssaal des Philosophikums (PT 3.0.79) [PROGRAMME]
Picture credits: von Nikola Smolenski (Eigenes Werk) [CC BY-SA 3.0 rs (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/rs/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Kathrin Pindl (October 12, 2015). Gudrun Gleba: Urban Accounting in a Medieval Town – Road Work Ahead for Editors. Abstract # 12 (random order). MEDEA. Retrieved April 19, 2025 from https://medea.hypotheses.org/275