The research method of eCodicology can be compared to the practice of distant reading which has been established in Literary Computing. The main focus is not concentrated on the detailed and intensive close reading of a single book. Instead, a quantitative overview over all pages of the medieval book inventory of St. Matthias Abbey will be performed, with a main focus on layout configuration. By the automatic analysis and intensive quantitative reading of individual codices codicologists are able to look at their material from a bird's eye perspective. The subjective view of the codicologist can - as it were - get objectified.

Firstly, basic parameters have been identified in the digitized pages: page size (height and width), written space, pictorial space, empty space, margins and the number of written lines. A metadata schema according to TEI P5 guidelines has been developed in order to document the results of the measurements.

A library of algorithms is developed for automatic extraction of the layout features. The data obtained from these feature extraction algorithms is then automatically stored in TEI XML files. Afterwards, a statistical analysis will be conducted.