How does a collaborative, regional initiative that includes 22 partner institutions, come into existence? What does running such a project actually entail? For anyone who might be interested in forming a regionally-based project with multiple partners, we are pleased to announce that our project’s early history has been documented in an article recently published in the Journal of the Early Book Society 26 (2023). All four project PIs contributed to …
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Manuscript Studies 8.2 Features Peripheral Manuscripts PIs, collaborators, and items
We are so pleased to share the news that multiple project PIs and partners contributed to the most recent issue of Manuscript Studies, the open-access journal of the Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies. The contributions are part of a special issue in the “Annotations” section, edited by Eric Johnson (Ohio State University) and focused specifically on manuscripts in the Midwest. The cover of the journal issue even comes from a …
Behind-the-Scenes: Digitizing Medieval Manuscripts across Multiple Midwest Institutions
As of September 26, 2022, we have captured and conducted quality review of 20,263 images (768 GB) from twelve partner institutions: Bowling Green State University, DePauw University, Earlham College, Goshen College, Illinois Wesleyan University, Knox College, Loyola University Chicago, Muskegon Museum of Art, Northern Illinois University, Saint Mary’s College, St. Meinrad Archabbey, and Xavier University. Contributing to the digitization efforts are partners from Bowling Green and Northern Illinois who digitized …
An Early Peek at Repository Contents
Digitization for the Peripheral Manuscripts Project began in the summer of 2021, and the description of partner items began shortly after. With each new item digitized and described, the project team is gaining a clearer sense of the characteristics of the items that will eventually be included in the project’s digital repository when it launches in 2024. We are only a year into our descriptive work, so we cannot yet …
Traces of Time
In early summer 2021, Dr. Elizabeth Hebbard, primary principal investigator of The Peripheral Manuscripts Project, conducted a site visit at Xavier University. As she began to examine one of the works selected for digitization, she observed that the identifier printed on the book did not match the identifier in the records of the Peripheral Manuscript Project. A discrepancy like this can be caused by human error, but, in this case, …
What’s in a description?
Breviarium sec. ord. S. Francisi BX2000.A2 1200z Manuscript on vellum with illuminated initials and miniatures of the Virgin and Child, and St. Agnes, with two leaves of musical notation followed by six leaves of calendar and with one leaf of musical notation and eight leaves of manuscript in a different hand at the end. Annotations are found throughout the manuscript. Bound in wood boards and sheepskin. The above description is …
Exploring a 16th c Antiphonal
In 2019, as the University of Dayton prepared for the dedication of the University Libraries newly-renovated spaces, a brief history and exhibit of the university libraries was researched and created. Among the artifacts displayed was an interesting journal kept by the former head librarian, Brother Walter Roesch, SM, who managed the library from 1954-1962. This small, leather-bound notebook held daily notations of Roesch’s activities, as well as his hopes for …
Finding Context for our Manuscript Leaves
This summer, thanks to YouTube, I had the chance to watch Eric Ensley, Curator of Books and Maps at the University of Iowa Special Collections and Archives, summer seminar on “The Biblioclasts: Is it ever ethical to break a book?”. His question is one I think many of us are grappling with as we look at the collections of leaves at our institution. Prior to joining as a partner on …
The Wow Factor
I tell visitors that this book was an early lesson in humility for me. When I became curator of Illinois Wesleyan University’s special collections sixteen years ago, I was surprised to learn that we had no information about how the book came to campus. The first page says it is part one of the work but we don’t know where part two is and we don’t know how part one …
Saint Meinrad’s Book of Hours
One of the manuscripts held at Saint Meinrad Archabbey, a partner in the Peripheral Manuscript Project, is an illuminated personal prayer book (a book of hours), most likely dating from the early 15th century. Its 164 vellum leaves, about 180 mm x 120 mm, contain a calendar of feasts and saints, the Hours of the Virgin, Seven Penitential Psalms, collections of prayers for different occasions, the Office of the Dead, …
