RESOURCE: Digitized Medieval Manuscripts – or DMMmaps – is a fantastic resource opening up to literally tens of thousands of digitized medieval manuscripts

The last few years have seen an enormous boom in the digitizing efforts of more than 250 libraries, archives and museums around the world; an effort which makes it possible to not only look at but also enjoy some of the most well-kept medieval secrets, even if you are just a lay-scholar or medieval history fan. Plus, of course, as a bonus it makes teaching medieval history so much easier, as these digitized goodies are made freely available for teaching purposes.

However, how do you find them? This challenge was recently met by a couple of dedicated bloggers (hitherto known from their old blog: sexy codicology), Giulio Menna and Marjolein de Vos, both from Leiden.

Carefully registering links to digitized archives inside Europe as well as delineating the number of digitized manuscripts residing in each collection, they have produced an apparently ever-growing resource though which digitized manuscripts may be accessed – through a series of maps as well as a more old-fashioned catalogue.

Just to give you an example: Recently the developers and managers of the website received an email with a link to 20 digitized manuscripts held in the University Library at Erlangen-Nürnberg. One of these was a manuscript, well-worth a scrutiny: The Quattuor Evangelia – UER MS 9 from Fulda, 850 – 870 AD. Illustrations in this article are from this manuscript

We humbly give thanks for this really very neat initiative. Highly recommended…

PS – Fans of the old blog will from now on have to emigrate to the new website. Apparently the bloggers discovered that including the word “sexy” in their blog-name amassed trillions of spam-mail marketing diverse unwanted goods…So remember to bookmark the new link.

SOURCE:

Digitized Medieval Manuscripts – or DMMmaps

SEE MORE:

Another fantastic resource is a Pinterest-page devoted to medieval bindings and book-covers

SEE MORE MANUSCRIPTS FROM ERLANGEN-NÛRNBERG:

Digital Collections of the University Library Erlangen-Nueremberg

Gateway Bayern