Profil, an iconographic database for modern watermarked papers
Résumé
The database Profil has been set up to offer readers studying modern literary manuscripts a reference tool to identify watermarked papers. In the study of writers' drafts as in artists' sketches, the different kinds of papers used provide valuable information on the genesis of a work of art and watermarks, when they exist, are the best visible hint allowing us to identify paper. A multimedia database, with digitized images more precise than usual traced design, seems to be appropriate to register, visualize, and compare modern watermarked papers. Besides its usefulness for specialists, such a database bearing on modern manuscripts should also be conceived in a didactic perspective, as it is oriented towards literary scholars who are not particularly familiar with the history of modern paper. In this paper we present the database Profil which includes a set of digitized images from a collection of betagraphies made by the reproduction service of the National French Library. Then we explain problems of database normalization when human sciences are involved.