Guiding Principles

1. Manuscripts: Our focus includes manuscripts from late antiquity, the middle ages and early modernity.
2. Research Library: Publication of digital manuscripts follows the criteria of scholarly editing and is oriented chiefly towards a scholarly research audience. The research library also serves as a laboratory where specialists can actively participate.
3. Switzerland: e-codices publishes digital manuscripts from Switzerland on the internet.
4. Multilingualism: All static pages and basic metadata for all manuscripts are offered in three Swiss national languages (German, French, Italian) and English.
5. Quality Reproductions: We strive to achieve very high photographic quality according to the principles of scientific research photography.
6. Quality Metadata and Search Functions: Each manuscript is linked to basic metadata, which can be complemented by one or more scholarly manuscript descriptions. Collaboration with manuscript experts facilitates the creation of new manuscript descriptions. The metadata are integrated into a database set up according to international standards.
7. Interoperability: We seek to create the most comprehensive network possible and to enable automated sharing of images and metadata using a variety of interfaces.
8. Manuscript Education: In order to raise public awareness of manuscripts and have them become a public good, our broad program introduces manuscripts to new and diverse interest groups, among them museums, schools, social networks, etc.
9. Open Access: All digital reproductions and metadata are freely accessible for non-commercial use.