Early Manuscripts at Oxford University

Early Manuscripts at Oxford University

This site provides digital versions of a number of manuscripts belonging to Oxford University and dating from the 9th to 16th centuries. Manuscripts in this collection came from Balliol College, the Bodleian Library, Corpus Christi College, Jesus College, Magdalen College, Merton College, and St. John's College.

Collection Principles: The page discussing the Imaging Project by which these manuscripts were digitized states that "manuscripts were selected as major treasures from their respective libraries, to create wider availability for originals which my otherwise be too fragile for handling." Thus, manuscripts were chosen for digitization based their condition and appeal.

Object Characteristics: Each manuscript is presented in its entirety (except for those that are incomplete by mistake, as noted on the website). All of the digital images were made by scanning directly from the original manuscripts at 600 dpi using a Dicomed 7520 scanback. The first page that appears when one clicks on the link to view a particular manuscript is one that deals with intellectual property rights, including a copyright notice and a list of allowable uses for the images. The individual page images are huge. I mean huge. There is no zoom capability because there is no need for one. One can also view the folios as facing page images with the verso of one folio and the recto of the next displayed.

Metadata: The metadata associated with each object is concerned primarily with the physical object, rather than the digital object. As noted above, we are told that the manuscripts were scanned at 600 dpi with a Dicomed 7520 scanback. Each manuscript has associated with it an "About this manuscript" page that contains a description of the manuscript, technical information about the digital image, and catalogue information. There is less information for some manuscripts than for others, and the technical information is limited to the statement about scanning rehearsed above. Each image is also accompanied by a heading that indicates who own the manuscript (i.e. which college) and the manuscript's shelfmark.

Intended Audience: It seems that the high resolution at which these images were scanned would be of most benefit for scholars, who would need to minutely examine the folios of these manuscripts. The images would not, perhaps, be particularly accessible to casual interested parties lacking a background in medieval studies, since translations and background material are not provided.