Custom Clothes: Medieval Manuscripts

Medieval Manuscripts

Minutes of the roundtable meeting on medieval manuscripts online resources

13 June 2007Rothermere American Institute, University of OxfordPresent: Richard Ovenden (Bodleian Library); Ivan Boserup (CERL); André Bouwman (University of Leiden Library); Kathleen Doyle (British Library); Consuelo Dutschke (Digital Scriptorium); Peter Kidd (lately attached to Bodleian and British Library MSS projects); Nigel Morgan (Parker-on-the-Web Digitisation Project); Jayne Ringrose (University of Cambridge Library); Bill Stoneman (Houghton Library), Bettina Wagner (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich); Chris Fletcher, Alexandra Franklin, Martin Kauffmann, Elizabeth Solopova, Colin Wakefield, and Piet van Boxel (Bodleian Library).Richard Ovenden opened the meeting by inviting participants to consider what steps could be taken by a combined effort of several institutions cataloguing mauscripts online that would be most beneficial to researchers in their search for, and use of, records and images of medieval manuscripts.PresentationsElizabeth Solopova presented an overview of the Bodleian’s own project to recatalogue its medieval manuscripts collections, which has been carried on since 1997 in several stages, beginning with basic records and adding detailed descriptions to classes of material, including, recently, the creation of separate records for illuminations in manuscripts in partnership with ARTstor.Dr Solopova described the Bodleian’s current plans for continuing to enrich descriptions of medieval manuscripts; to add digital images, where possible, linked to the records; and to improve electronic resources by linking databases of citations to the records.The format for descriptive data used by the Bodleian is currently XML in an EAD format; the Bodleian hopes to switch to using TEI P5. It is also intended that all digital objects, such as records and images, will be held within the METS format.