Recovering the Earliest English Language in Scotland is a project that aims to uncover Old English place names in southern Scotland. Old English is the predecessor to both Middle English and Scots, and the project relies upon place names to provide evidence of the early Northumbrian dialect of the language. As of 2020, the database includes a list of over 500 place names in southern Scotland derived from Old English. Users can view the list of places alphabetically, by map, or through advanced searching for keywords and other salient qualities. Places can be displays on a map and frequently include a description of the place-name in addition to bibliography where available.
Users can download all project data through its API, and all data is made available under a Creative Commons license. One can also find a glossary of early place terms in addition to links to other projects with similar goals.
A searchable catalog of digitized manuscripts containing the Roman de la Rose, an allegorical love poem in the form of a dream vision composed in Old French in the 13th century. The current collection of 130 manuscripts (of an estimated 320 total) may be browsed by repository, shelf mark, date, origin, or illustrations, allowing cross-manuscript comparison of illustrations and sections of text. Much of the data downloadable in .csv format.
* National History Day Selected Resource *
From the creators: As a monument to medieval kingship and a setting for parliamentary government, St Stephen’s Chapel in the Palace of Westminster has helped to shape the political culture of the nation. Funded by the AHRC (2013-17), our project explores the history, art and architecture of the royal chapel which became the first dedicated House of Commons. This website provides access to the 3D visualizations modeled from our research.
The Canterbury Roll is a 15th-century, hand-written genealogy that begins with Noah and traces the rulers of England from the mythical Brutus to King Edward IV. The genealogy is accompanied by an extensive commentary in Latin. The five-metre long manuscript roll was purchased by the University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand in 1918 from a local family of British descent. The key products of the first stage of the Canterbury Roll Project are a new digital transcription and translation, both of which have been mapped to a high quality digital facsimile of the Roll. The ongoing project is a partnership between UC History, the UC Arts Digital Lab, the UC internship programme, the Collaborative Research Centre 933 of Heidelberg University, and Nottingham Trent University (UK).
The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales is a free resource for the study of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales written and curated by professional scholars of medieval literature. The project is imagined as a resource for undergraduate and graduate students encountering the Tales early in their academic careers. Teachers of Middle English literature may find the essays particularly useful and approachable for classroom use. Articles comprise essays and reference chapters. Essays cover a topic of import to Chaucer’s work, for example “Sisterhood and Brotherhood in the Knight’s Tale,” whereas reference chapters treat foundational cultural topics, like manuscripts and everyday life.
All of the texts on the Companion’s site are freely available and peer reviewed by scholars of Middle English literature.
Published by the University of Glasgow, the Thesaurus of Old English Project is an online resource that thematically arranges definitions of terms. Drawing from standard dictionaries of Old English, the project has created thematic entries that are cross referenced with one another. The project is fully searchable; while searching, a user may go directly to the thesaurus’ data or be directed off-site to one of the major dictionaries of Old English. The project has well over 40,000 entries.
Though free to use for individual users, the project makes explicit that large-scale use of data from the project is not allowed. Should users wish to analyze the Thesaurus’ corpus data, they should contact the creators.
The Wren Digital Library is the digital archive of the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge. The Wren is home to over 1,000 medieval manuscripts from the 10th century onwards, of which the digital archive has published over 800 in addition to many early printed books and modern manuscripts. The ongoing project of the digital platform is to digitally publish all manuscripts in M.R. James’ 1901-1903 print catalog of the library’s holdings.
As of 2020, the library has no search function, but one can filter manuscripts by title, shelfmark, and date. Each entry includes catalog information in addition to a bibliography. Images are available in IIIF format and can be downloaded free of charge, though high-resolution images can only be obtained by contacting the repository.
From the creators: York’s Archbishops Registers Revealed provides free access to over 20,000 images of Registers produced by the Archbishops of York, 1225-1650, in addition to a growing searchable index of names, subjects, places and organisations. The registers are a valuable, and in many cases, unexploited source for ecclesiastical, political, social, local and family history – covering periods of war, famine, political strife and religious reformation in the Archdiocese of York and the wider Northern Province.
The site contains over 5000 entries cataloged and organized with subject headings, indexes, and searchable contents. The project also offers IIIF capability for its images.