The Karkégi archive on modern Cairo: making heterogeneous data digitally accessible

Max Karkégi (1931-2011), a great lover of Cairo, has bequeathed to the National Library of France (BnF) a very rich documentary collection consisting of thousands of photographies, partly exploited on his website “Egypt of bygone days”, but also documents on places and personalities of modern Cairo. From this rich documentation, Adam Mestyan and Mercedes Volait wish to build a digital work tool that combines cartography, photography and text. 

The workshop will gather specialists to discuss engaging with rare visual and textual data on Modern Cairo and working at their digital access. 

The first day of the workshop, Monday April 23rd, will be open to general public to attend while the other three days will be exclusive to invited scholars. They will be working together to develop a research project on the subject. 

9:00-9:30: Laurent Bavay and Nicolas Michel (IFAO): Introduction to the workshop: engaging with rare visual and textual data on Modern Cairo and working at their digital access

9:30-10:30: Dr. Amr Talaat, Max… An Egyptian Heart

10:30-11:00: Questions and answers moderated by Adam Mestyan (Duke University/IFAO) 

11:00-11:30: Coffee break/Pause café 

11:30-12:30: Mercedes Volait (CNRS/InVisu), The components of the Karkégi archive and the finding aids available

 – Finding Tools: on-line list of Max Karkégi’s library; Comprehensive description of the papers on the Defter

– Images on line on Gallica.fr

– L’Égypte d’antan website stored at the Dépôt légal numérique (DLN), Bibliothèque nationale de France 

1:00-2:00: Break 

2:00-3:30: Antonio Mendes (CNRS/InVisu), Outils et modes de traitement de données visuelles à l’heure du FAIR data (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable)

– Cataloguer sous Omeka en mode FAIR: le corpus Facchinelli (http://facchinelli.huma-num.fr/)

– Une plateforme expérimentale : la “Perséide” ATHAR (http://info.persee.fr/perseides/)

– Expérience de traitement FAIR de 4 Albums du fonds Karkégi, en relation avec le référentiel “Modern Cairo Gazetteer” 

3:30-4:00: Coffee break/Pause café 

4:00-5:30: Parallel initiatives

– Adam Mestyan (Duke University/IFAO),The Najjari project, as an alternative methodology to achieve localization of data starting with textual lists: an experiment in Arabic TEI- XML

– Brenda Michailidis and Duncan McDonald (American University in Cairo), Mapping the geography of art in Cairo, a-AUC funded project: scope, tools, planned outcome 

5:30-6:00: Questions and answers moderated by Mercedes Volait (CNRS/InVisu).