Online Databases
Hill Museum & Manuscript Library [www.hmml.org]
The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) is a non-profit organization located at and sponsored by Saint John's Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota. HMML’s mission is to identify, digitally photograph, catalogue, and archive the contents of manuscripts belonging to threatened communities and to make the copies available to users around the world through online catalogues. Since its founding in 1965, HMML has partnered with 480 libraries and archives to photograph more than 125,000 manuscript books dating from the ancient to early modern eras, totalling some 40,000,000 handwritten pages. HMML's online catalogue, OLIVER, contains over 93,000 entries. Its online image library, Vivarium, contains sample images from digitized collections and provides free access to complete manuscripts in password-protected galleries. In addition to its manuscript collections, HMML holds works of art and rare printed books from the Middle Ages to the present and is home to The Saint John's Bible, the first handwritten and illuminated Bible to have been commissioned by a Benedictine Abbey since the invention of the printing press in the 15h century.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_Museum_&_Manuscript_Library
Europeana [www.europeana.eu]
Europeana is an internet portal that acts as an interface to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe. The project traces back to a recommendation of European heads of state in 2005, and has been funded by the European Commission under its eContentplus programme. In 2010, the project accomplished its objective of giving access to over 10 million digital objects. More than 2,000 institutions across Europe have contributed to Europeana, so far. Together, their assembled collections let users explore Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage from prehistory up until today. The digital objects that users can find in Europeana are not stored on a central computer, but remain with the cultural institution and hosted on their networks. Europeana collects contextual information – or metadata – about the items, including a small picture. In order to make the information searchable, Europeana uses a single common standard, known as the Europeana Semantic Elements. The use of Europeana material for research and education purposes is for free.
Manuscriptorium [www.manuscriptorium.com]
The Manuscriptorium project is creating a virtual research environment providing access to all existing digital documents in the sphere of historic book resources (manuscripts, incunabula, early printed books, maps, charters and other types of documents). These historical resources, otherwise scattered in various digital libraries around the world, are now available under a single digital library interface. The service provides seamless access to more than 5 million digital images. Manuscriptorium is funded by the European Union and coordinated by the National Library of the Czech Republic, with numerous European and extra-European libraries and research institutions contributing.
e-codices. Virtuelle Handschriftenbibliothek der Schweiz [www.e-codices.ch]
The goal of the e-codices project is to provide access to all medieval and selected early modern manuscripts of Switzerland via a virtual library. By the end of 2012, the virtual library numbered 961 manuscripts from 42 different libraries. The virtual library will be continuously updated and extended. It offers digitized reproductions and scientific descriptions of the manuscripts recorded. The website offers neatly arranged information in several languages on finalised as well as on on-going digitization projects, on conservation guidelines and other technical specifications of digitization, on software used, scientific staff, co-operation partners, and on origin of the manuscripts. Pictures and metadata are available for free for non-commercial purposes. The project is supported by the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Digitalisierte Nachlässe [http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Digitalisierte_Nachlässe]
This wikisource web portal collects references on partly or completely digitized Nachlasse from the German-speaking world, that are available on the internet, mostly for free. Apart from 50 Nachlasse of important persons, the website compiles more than 20 portals and digitized autograph collections. There are, however, no references on single autographs.
Zentrales Verzeichnis digitalisierter Drucke – ZVDD [www.zvdd.de]
This web portal collects references to printed works from the 15th century up until today that have been digitalized in Germany. You can search after criteria such as title, author, printing, imprint, date of publication and others. By the end of January 2013, the index has listed more than 995,000 titles. ZVDD is run by the Göttingen State and University Library.
Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum – MDZ [www.digitale-sammlungen.de]
The Munich Digitization Center (MDZ) is an institution dedicated to digitalization, online publication and the long-term archival preservation of the holdings of the Bavarian State Library and other cultural heritage institutions. It was founded in 1997. The digitalization of the Munich Corvinae counts among its most remarkable projects. VD16|digital is the currently biggest digitization project of MDZ. It aims at the complete digitization of at least one copy of every printed 16th century work published in German-speaking countries, which is preserved in the Bavarian State Library. Every volume is published instantly on the web. Access is free of charge. The long-term preservation of all images in a high quality ensures various opportunities of usage in the future.
VD 16/ VD 17 [www.vd16.de] [www.vd17.de]
VD16 and VD17 are two major projects carried out by the Munich Digitization Center. The two indexes refer to the printed works published in the German-speaking world in the 16th and 17th century, thus representing a kind of retrospective national bibliography for the period of 1501–1700. The indexes comprise all German-language titles as well as all foreign-language titles that were published in the German-speaking area of that time. Popular prints, maps and sheets of music are not listed in the indexes. The database currently numbers about 270,000 titles.
Manuscripta Mediaevalia [www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de]
This German-language web portal offers free access to scientific descriptions and digital pictures of medieval manuscripts from different libraries in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Currently more than 75,000 documents are available. Manuscripta Mediaevalia is supported by the Berlin State Library, the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg (Germany's documentation center for art history), and the Bavarian State Library Munich. The stock may be scanned according to locations and libraries, whereas the index of iconographical topics provides a clear and hierarchically structured access to the images in 2,500 illuminated manuscripts.
BnF Archivs et manuscrits [archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/pages/index.html]
The digital library for online users, was established in 1997. The National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de France – BnF) is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. Its collections comprise 30 million items, among them 14 million books and publications. BnF’s archives et manuscrits catalogue contains the references for some of the manuscripts and archive collections held by the Manuscripts and Performing Arts departments (at the Richelieu Library) and all manuscripts held by the Arsenal Library (Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal). Gallica, the digital library for online users, was established in 1997.
IRHT Medium: gestion des reproductions des manuscrits [medium.irht.cnrs.fr]
The “Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes” (IRHT) is an independent research laboratory of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Research at IRHT is devoted to the study of the medieval manuscript and textual transmission from Antiquity to the Renaissance. IRHT Medium database provides access to the digitalized manuscripts of the IRHT.
Digital Scriptorium [bancroft.berkeley.edu/digitalscriptorium]
The Digital Scriptorium is a growing image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. It is run by the University of California Berkeley Library.
Lexicon Abbreviaturarum [inkunabeln.ub.uni-koeln.de/vdibProduction/handapparat/nachs_w/cappelli/cappelli.html]
Online version of Adriano Cappelli’s Lexicon Abbreviaturarum, first published in 1899 in Italian language. It contains, in alphabetical sequence, an overview and explanations of 14,000 Latin and Italian abbreviations used in medieval manuscripts, thus offering a still most valuable tool for Latin paleography. Cappelli (1859–1942) was archivist and palaeographer at the Royal Archive in Parma.
Universität Heidelberg [www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/helios/digi/handschriften.html]
In its vaults, the Heidelberg University Library holds three superimportant manuscript fonds, among them the Codices Palatini Germanici, which represent the oldest major collection of German manuscripts, grown over centuries, and completely extant. The three fonds together comprise about 5,500 objects. 893 manuscripts from the 9th to 17th century – among them 848 German, 29 Greek, and 16 Latin-language objects – have come from the Bibliotheca Palatina (see below).
Bibliotheca Palatina (Heidelberg) [www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/helios/digi/palatina.html]
The Bibliotheca Palatina ("Palatinate library") of Heidelberg, one of the most important collections of German-language manuscripts from the Medieval and the Renaissance, is fully online accessible. The collection comprises 848 codices with about 270,000 pages in total and about 7,000 miniatures, many of which have not been indexed so far. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Bibliotheca Palatina was considered as the biggest and most important German library. It had grown out of a number of previously independent institutions, such as the Stiftsbibliothek in the Heiliggeistkirche, the arts faculty library, as well as the electors’ private libraries. Essential manuscripts from the original Bibliotheca Palatina include the Carolingian "Lorsch Evangelary", the Falkenbuch (De arte venandi cum avibus), and the Codex Manesse.
Codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis (CEEC) [www.ceec.uni-koeln.de]
Within the project CEEC the medieval manuscript holdings of the Episcopal and Cathedral Library Cologne will be digitized. This library therefore is the first library worldwide to give access to its complete medieval holdings as "Digital Library". Project descriptions or the instructions at the search and browse page are available in English, too. Most of the catalogue information is in the original language of the printed catalogues (mostly German, sometimes Latin or English).
Goethe Universität Frankfurt [sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/msma]
The department of manuscripts at the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library stores more than 600 occidental medieval manuscripts. It houses the German and Latin stock of manuscripts of the old Frankfurt town library, with even a few objects from the original stock of the Rats- und Barfüßerbibliothek (15th and 16th century) having survived. At the beginning of the 19th century, about two thirds of the medieval manuscripts came to the town library, as a result of the secularization and closure of abbey and monastery libraries in Frankfurt (St. Bartholomew Abbey, St. Leonhard Abbey, Carmelites Monastory, and Dominican Monastery). Up until the 1930ies, there were further accessions through legacies, donations, and acquisitions. The online editions of the medieval manuscripts do not underlie any copyright restrictions, as far as is known.
Album interactif de paléographie médiévale [ciham.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/paleographie]
Medieval Palaeography is a science in its own right, and a long learning process is necessary to master it. It is not only the art of reading writings of the past, but it also encompasses the history of writing, the analysis of forms and contexts of writing (material culture, social history, etc.). The purpose of this interactive album, consisting of a collection of transcription exercises, is not to be a substitute for a proper learning of this science, but simply to allow students or amateurs (genealogists, history enthusiasts, etc.) to train themselves in the practical aspect of palaeography, that is reading manuscript texts. The Interactive Album has been established by the transversal Digital Humanities programme of the UMR 5648 – Histoire, Archéologie, Littératures des Mondes Chrétiens et Musulmans Médiévaux at the University of Lyon. The website is available in English for the most part,only the introduction (short description) of each exercise is in French.
GW – Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke [www.gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de]
The Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (abbreviated as GW) is an ongoing project of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin to publish a union catalogue of incunabula. The Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke is available in part in print and in its entirety – in draft form – via an online database. The first volume of the print catalogue was published in 1925 (Leipzig: Anton Hiersemann) and the most recent volume was completed in 2009, extending to the entry Horem.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesamtkatalog_der_Wiegendrucke
ISTC – Incunabula Short Title Catalogue [www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/index.html]
The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue is the international database of 15th-century European printing created by the British Library with contributions from institutions worldwide. The database records nearly every item printed from movable type before 1501, but not material printed entirely from woodblocks or engraved plates. About 30,000 editions are listed, including some 16th-century items previously assigned incorrectly to the 15th century. Information on each item includes authors, short titles, the language of the text, printer, place and date of printing, and format. Locations are noted if they have been verified. Links are provided to online digital facsimiles wherever possible.
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