#digitized manuscripts

[upennmanuscripts]

It's June, so this week we'll be featuring some June calendar pages from manuscripts digitized through the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis Project (BiblioPhilly). The BiblioPhilly project digitized over 475 manuscripts from Philadelphia-area institutions over three years and made them available, free for reuse, in our online interface here. 

[medievalpoc]

Newly digitized at the British Library: Cotton MS Caligula A VII/1\

Manuscript Viewer: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_caligula_a_vii!1_f003r

[upennmanuscripts]

Why do we digitise? 20 reasons in 20 pictures

Closing keynote for the Europeana Network Association AGM 2016, held at the National Library of Latvia, Riga

This is a great little slideshow from Mia Ridge at the British Library. We here at Penn can appreciate all of these reasons. Digital access is not the same as physical access, and there are things you can do with a physical manuscript that you just can’t with a digital one (figuring out the physical structure of a manuscript, for example) but likewise digitization makes so much possible. Just for example, would you know about the Penis Tree if not for digitization? Probably not!

Score one for digitized manuscripts, All Hail the Penis Tree. (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. Fr. 25526, f. 106v)

[upennmanuscripts]

Elephant Water Clock Among 25,000 Pages of Medieval Arabic Scientific Manuscripts

A new online portal created by the British Library and Qatar Foundation features 25,000 pages of medieval Arabic manuscripts centered on the history of science.

[ncfmss-blog]

Manuscripts on Twitter

There are a whole bunch of people who regularly post great pictures from medieval manuscripts on Twitter. If you're on Twitter and interested, you might check out these accounts: 

Among academics, I've already mentioned Erik Kwakkel (@erik_kwakkel), but also try Johan Oosterman (@JohanOosterman), Damien Kempf (@DamienKempf), Jonathan Hsy (@JonathanHsy), Robert Miller (@robmmiller), John Overholt (@john_overholt), and Peter Stokes (@pa_stokes). 

Among thematic accounts, try Discarding Images (@discarding_imgs), Sexy Codicology (@SexyCodicology), and Manuscripts Online (@MedMSSO). Two fun accounts not strictly focused on manuscripts: Chaucer Doth Tweet (@LeVostreGC) tweets in the persona of a snarky Geoffrey Chaucer, while Medieval People of Color (@medievalpoc) focuses on images of people of color in works of European art history. (MedievalPoC is also on Tumblr.)

A number of libraries have great Twitter feeds where they post images from their own collections: the British Library (@BLMedieval); the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (@MedievalMss); the Bibliothèque nationale de France (@GallicaBnF); the University of Nottingham (@mssUniNott); the US Library of Congress (@librarycongress [not strictly manuscripts]); the Newberry Library in Chicago (@NewberryLibrary); the Beinecke Library at Yale (@BeineckeLibrary); Houghton Library at Harvard (@HoughtonLib); the Huntington Library (@TheHuntington); the Getty Museum (@TheGetty); and the Vatican Library (@vaticanlibrary and @DigitaVaticana). The handle @manuscripts, sadly, got nabbed early on by the University of Cape Town, which posts virtually nothing medieval.

The hashtags #manuscripts and #paleography are pretty self-explanatory, but there's been a fair amount of interesting Twitter traffic recently under the the hashtag #DDMss (for Digging Deeper: Medieval Manuscripts), a MOOC currently being run by Stanford professor Elaine Treharne (@ETreharne) and Cambridge professor Orietta Da Rold (@orietta_darold).

I'll stop there, shall I?

—CEB