Modelling the Middle Ages. VisColl and VCEditor as a Digital Tool for Manuscript Research

VCEditor (VisColl Editor) is a digital tool for modelling, visualising, and reconstructing the collation structure of books. This article discusses how tools like VCEditor shape research practices of medieval manuscript scholars. Based on in-depth interviews with the developers and with users, this article details how scholars use VCEditor in their work and, as a consequence, the possible implications for the way manuscript scholarship is conducted. This is taken as starting point for a theoretical consideration in which digitisation and its effects on scholarly material engagement and knowledge production is examined. The findings demonstrate how VCEditor operates not merely as a technical aid, but as a mediating contributor to knowledge production – one whose epistemic significance emerges at the point of interactive engagement between scholar, software, and medieval material.