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e-codices newsletter


The e-codices newsletter provides information about the latest updates, highlights, and activities of our project and appears about 4-5 times per year.
We are delighted to count you among our readers!

The e-codices team

 
 
In this issue
  1. 10 years e-codices
  2. Call for Collaboration 2015
  3. Fragmentarium - Laboratory for Digital Fragmentology
 
 
January 2015

Issue N° 18
 
 
 
 
10 years e-codices
 
In January 2005, a small research group at the University of Fribourg, in collaboration with the Abbey Library of St. Gall, began to publish digital copies of this world-famous collection’s medieval manuscripts on the internet. Over the past ten years, this project has continued to grow: today it consists of a team of 14 people (6.45 FTE) as well as several service providers. e-codices maintains two digitization centers, one in the German-speaking and another in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. It cooperates with all large public and ecclesiastical collections in Switzerland (> 20 manuscripts) as well as with several private libraries. Thanks to the great interest of domestic as well as foreign foundations and to the support of the Rectors’ Conference of Swiss Universities, e-codices was able to raise more than 6.7 million Swiss Francs in third party funds over the past ten years; about half of these funds came from foreign foundations.
We asked Prof. Dr. Christoph Flüeler, director and founder of e-codices, what changes the last several years have brought to the work of the digital manuscript library: "Ten years ago, there were not even a handful of digital manuscript libraries with scientific standards; today there are hundreds, and they have become very professional in their work. e-codices has contributed to this development and today faces completely different challenges than it did ten years ago. Common standards, interoperability, sustainability, systematic digitization of large holdings of manuscripts — before 2005 these were ideas that broke the mold and surpassed even the imagination. Today they present challenges that all libraries face. Digital manuscripts have regenerated and changed manuscript studies. Ten years ago, digital manuscript research imitated traditional scholarship; today it guides all manuscript research".
 
csg-0023_007

St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 23, p. 7 – Folchart Psalter (Psalterium Gallicanum with Cantica)

 
 
 
zbs-SII-0043_036v

Solothurn, Zentralbibliothek, Cod. S II 43, f. 36v – "Historienbibel" from the workshop of Diebold Lauber ('vom Staal-Story Bible')

 
Call for collaboration 2015
 
Swiss manuscript collections and e-codices – Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland would like to encourage collaboration with researchers in the field of manuscript scholarship by requesting that you, our scholarly users, suggest manuscripts held in Swiss collections that are important to your research for possible digitization and inclusion on the e-codices website.
We would like to use this collaborative method to make additional medieval and modern manuscripts available on e-codices during the year 2015. After 2010 and 2013, this is already our third call; previous calls for collaboration have led to our publishing 96 manuscripts in collaboration with scholars. Manuscripts may represent any field of study, but should be of major significance for research in the respective fields.
The “call for collaboration 2015" is again issued jointly with e-codices’ partner libraries. The application deadline is 1 March 2015. Further information can be found under: Call for collaboration.
 
 
 
Fragmentarium - An international scholarly network that enables libraries, collectors, researchers and students to upload medieval manuscript fragments and to describe, transcribe and assemble them online.
 
e-codices will be augmented by an international project that focuses on medieval fragments.
Fragments, like pieces in a puzzle, contain precious traces of a destroyed culture; bringing these pieces together and cataloging them online presents a great challenge for current manuscript research. Fragmentarium intends to make use of the internet as a central workplace to inventory, catalog and scientifically research medieval fragments. Generously supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the Swiss Science Foundation, in the next three years we will create a platform that - similar to a laboratory - allows libraries, scholars and students to upload, catalog, transcribe and assemble medieval manuscript fragments.
We have been able to form a community of important European and North American libraries, to start working on this joint project. Initial partners are the following twelve institutions:
  • Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
  • Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Città del Vaticano
  • Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, together with the équipement d’excellence BIBLISSIMA
  • Bodleian Library, together with St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford
  • Center for History and Palaeography – National Bank Cultural Foundation, Athens
  • Harvard University Library, Cambridge MA, together with The Medieval Academy of America
  • Martin Schøyen Collection – Oslo - Londres
  • Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
  • Stanford University Libraries
  • The British Library, London
  • Università degli Studi di Cassino e del Lazio meridionale
  • Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig
 
vad-0292a-7r

St. Gallen, Kantonsbibliothek, Vadianische Sammlung, VadSlg Ms. 292a, f. 7r – Bible (fragments)

 
 
 
e-codices
Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland
Rue de l’Hôpital 4, CH – 1700 Fribourg

T + 41 (0) 26 300 71 57
F + 41 (0) 26 300 96 27

www.e-codices.ch
e-codices@unifr.ch

 
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