n.the practical recreation of the original provenance of a set of records or parts of a manuscript held by multiple repositories by making digitized versions of the records available via a single web portalNorman 2009The virtual reunification of Codex Sinaiticus is the culmination of a four-year collaboration between the British Library, Leipzig University Library, theMonastery of St Catherine (Mount Sinai, Egypt), and the National Library of Russia (St Petersburg), each of which hold different parts of the physical manuscript.Punzalan 2013, 6In this study, virtual reunification refers to the strategy of using digital technologies to re-integrate artifacts, literary or artistic works of the same origin that have been scattered or dispersed for various historical and cultural reasons. It is a process widely touted as one of the capacities afforded by recent advancements in digitization practices on the heritage front.Krah 2014Virtual reunification is carried out by digitisation, georeferencing an[d] publishing on Hungarian Archives Portal, on which platform georeferenced maps of 14 counties (at least partly) are available.Sutherland 2020The manuscripts were held in a single collection until 1845, when at her sister Cassandra’s death they were dispersed among family members, with a second major dispersal, to public institutions and private collections, in the 1920s. Digitization enables their virtual reunification and will provide scholars with the first opportunity to make simultaneous ocular comparison of their different physical and conceptual states; it will facilitate intimate and systematic study of Austen’s working practices across her career, a remarkably neglected area of scholarship within the huge, world-wide Austen critical industry.
