[Sca-librarians] Digitized manuscripts-- Fwd: Parker on the Web]

[Johnna Holloway]

Thanks to 'Lainie -- this came through on the
SCA Cooks list

Johnnae


>Stanford Report, July 13, 2005
>Medieval manuscripts to hit Internet
>
>
>A $1.4 million grant awarded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in June 
>will fund
>a collaborative project in which Stanford University Libraries, the 
>University of
>Cambridge and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, will make hundreds of 
>medieval
>manuscripts accessible on the Internet. The Parker on the Web project will 
>create
>electronic research tools and digitize library materials, including more 
>than 500
>manuscripts at the Parker Library dating from the 6th through the 16th 
>centuries,
>as well as editions, translations and secondary works.
>
>The Parker Library in Corpus Christi College holds the collection of 
>Matthew Parker
>(1504-1575), who served as Archbishop of Canterbury during the English 
>Reformation
>and was confessor to Anne Boleyn and master of Corpus Christi. An avid 
>book collector,
>Parker salvaged medieval manuscripts after the dissolution of monasteries 
>and preserved
>materials related to Anglo-Saxon England. The Parker Library holds nearly 
>a quarter
>of all extant Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in the world.
>
>Although the library has drawn visiting scholars from around the world for 
>more
>than a century, access to its materials has been limited due to space and 
>preservation
>concerns. "As unique artifacts, these manuscripts are kept in a single room
>in Cambridge that is not open to the public," said Andrew Herkovic of Stanford
>University Libraries. The web project "opens that single room up to the 
>scholarly
>community."
>
>Parker on the Web will create flexible links between high-quality images 
>of manuscripts
>and texts and supporting texts, such as translations and commentary, to 
>allow scholars
>to conduct both text-based and contextual research. The Mellon Foundation 
>grant
>will fund one year of production on the project, which is expected to be 
>completed
>in about four years.
>
>A prototype of the Parker on the Web site, containing high-resolution page 
>images
>for two complete manuscripts (Parts I and II of Matthew Paris' Chronica 
>Maiora),
>as well as all of the 1912 MR James catalog describing the entire 
>collection and
>other secondary texts, was released last year. The prototype's development 
>was supported
>by earlier grants from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Mellon 
>Foundation.
>
>The prototype will be freely accessible at least through 2005. Scholars 
>and students
>in all relevant disciplines—especially medieval, Renaissance and 
>early modern
>studies, art history, paleography, church history, the history of the 
>English language
>and Anglo-Saxon studies—are invited to visit the site and provide 
>feedback to
>the project team during the prototype stage.
>
>"The Stanford team invested a huge effort to get this project to this point,
>and I hope the payoff will be great access to the incredible treasures of 
>the Parker
>Library as well as a replicable model for other manuscript collections," said
>University Librarian Michael Keller.
>
>Detailed information about the Parker Library, the project and the 
>prototype is
>available at http://parkerweb.stanford.edu.
>
>================================================================

___________________________________________________________________________
"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry 
into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It 
both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind."
~Julius Caesar



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