Skip to content

Archives

Chinese Text Project

The Chinese Text Project is an open-access digital library whose goal is to make available a wide variety of Chinese texts from ancient periods. Though the site focuses on ancient texts in particular, texts from the Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties are well represented as well. Texts are generally taken from open-source documents published elsewhere on the internet, but there are also original transcriptions as well.

The CTP also brings together a variety of resources for the study of ancient Chinese texts, including dictionaries, bibliographies, and other resources. There is also an active discussion board where questions of transcription and translation are frequently asked. The site continues to be updated regularly.

Documentary Archaeology of Late Medieval Europe (DALME)

The Documentary Archaeology of Late Medieval Europe provides access to over 500 records, primarily household inventories, that are pertinent to the study of material culture in later medieval Europe. Records typically incorporate original images, facing-page transcriptions with TEI markup, record descriptions, and metadata. New records are added on a regular basis. The site also publishes brief essays that feature inventories and objects in the collection.

The project actively seeks contributors.

Eel-Rents Project

The Eel-Rents Project is a multimedia platform for an exploration of eels as a part of the economy and culture of eleventh-century Britain. The project presents an interactive map that shows the location of eel rents in the Domesday Books and also presents a bibliography and discussion of the importance of the aquatic animals to early English life.

Estoria de Espanna Digital

Created by scholars at the University of Birmingham, the Estoria de Espanna Digital project has created a digital edition of nine of the medieval manuscript witnesses to the text of the Estoria de Espanna, the 13th-century Spanish-language chronicle commissioned by Alfonso X. The chronicle details the history of the Iberian peninsula from Roman times up to Alfonso’s reign. The project presents the versions in diplomatic or facsimile format and allows a user to view texts side by side for comparison.

The project includes methodological and introductory information in both Spanish and English. The project has also made its data open-source, allowing users to download complete textual versions in XML. The project was recently updated in June 2020.

Footprints: Jewish Books through Time and Place

The Footprints projects is a growing database of records that aim to track the circulation of printed “Jewish books” across time and space. Though the great majority of records come from the early modern period and beyond, there are currently over 200 entries from the invention of the printing press to the end of the 16th century.

The database tracks interactions with printed books through what it calls “footprints,” which is the project’s terminology for users’ interactions with books through marginalia, ownership marks, and numerous other qualities. The project features advanced search functionality that allows a user to search by time, place, and various textual and physical properties of the printed books. There is also visualization capability to show the path of books and holdings in various repositories around the world.

Additionally, an active community of users exists on the site as well as a blog that is updated regularly.

Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: A Dictionary of the Welsh Language

Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: A Dictionary of the Welsh Language (GPC) is the online version of A Dictionary of the Welsh Language, the historical dictionary of Welsh similar in scope to the Oxford English Dictionary. Funded by the Welsh government, the decades-long print project was completed in 2001 and the digital version was begun in 2011 and is an ongoing project. The GPC contains entries dating back to the earliest references to Welsh and contains many entries spanning the medieval period. Entries contain grammatical information as well as a definition and dated historical sources to the words under consideration. Users may search entries in either Welsh or English.

The project is free to use and has an active web presence that updates users on the project’s status.

Glasgow Incunabula Project

The Glasgow Incunabula Project seeks to provide a catalog of the over 1000 incunabula in the University of Glasgow Library’s collections. The project provides multiple access points for the early printed materials. On the website, one can find lists of incunabula by authors, printers, dates, annotators, languages, prices, and multiple other qualities.

Most incunabula’s listings contain a detailed catalog entry and sometimes an accompanying image, all housed on Flickr. The project also has a blog that was active until 2017.

Medieval Bestiary

This web site deals with any and all aspects of the general topic “animals in the Middle Ages”, though there is an emphasis on the manuscript tradition, particularly of the bestiaries, and mostly in western Europe. The subject is vast, so this a large site, with well over 3000 pages, and perhaps the best way to explore it is to just wander around. The various pages making up the site are extensively linked; any text appearing in this blue color is a link (except for that one!). You can also click the green arrows at the top and bottom of each page; these will take you from one section to the next, or to the next page in a series. If you get lost, click the  button on any page to return to the table of contents. If you are interested in bestiary manuscripts, start wil the section on the manuscript families, which will link you to various other pages of interest. If you want to learn about a particular animal, start with the Beasts pages. If you are looking for something in particular, try the site search. For more help in navigating the site, click the green  on any page.

Informal articles, opinionated reviews, and irreverent comments on the bestiary genre can be found in the bestiary blog, Chimaera.

 

(Please note: this resource has not been updated since 2011, including the bibliography)

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Met Publications

Met Publications is the publishing house website of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The site contains listings for many of the publications of the Met Museum dating back to 1911 on topics touching on all aspects of art history from all periods and regions. Included among these are numerous exhibition catalogs, collection catalogs, the Metropolitan Museum JournalThe Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, educational and pedagogical books, and other online publications. Titles that are currently in print by the Met are fully searchable, though one must purchase the books to see the entire text. For books that are out of print, the museum makes the fully text available online and for download for free.

The search function on the Met Publications site allows users to search the various types of publications by name, author, type of text, and date among other qualities. Publications are regularly updated.

Munich Digitization Center, Digital Library

The Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ) is the digital imagining website of the Bavarian State Library and associated institutions. The website includes content in German, English, and Italian. The MDZ is responsible for digitizing and publishing images of the State Library’s rich medieval manuscript and early print book holdings, which total well over 15,000 items. The collections comprise items from across Europe particularly but also items from around the world. The library’s holdings are especially rich in early medieval manuscripts.

The MDZ has both an online catalog for searching in addition to regularly updated online exhibitions. New items are added to the digital collections continuously. The catalog allows for advanced searching by title, date, and author. Each entry in the image database contains a catalog entry as well as the ability to download images in differing sizes and format. Also included are IIIF-compliant images and a Mirador viewer.

New York Public Library Digital Collections

The New York Public Library’s Digital Collections is the NYPL’s digital image archive. It contains a continuously updated selection of digital exhibitions in addition to a collection of over 4,000 images of manuscripts and many more of early printed books. The NYPL’s digital collections are global in outlook, including manuscripts from across the globe. Its holdings range from the 1200s onward, with strengths in the later Middle Ages and early print as well as Jewish manuscripts and books.

Digital entries include catalog information, multiple options for download though only in JPG format, and a timeline of information about the item where available. Digital Collections entries also link back to the NYPL’s catalog entries. Items are made freely available with citations for each item available to copy and paste.

Recovering the Earliest English Language in Scotland: Evidence from place-names

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.

St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster: Visual & Political Culture, 1292-1941

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.

Read More →

The Community of the Realm in Scotland 1249-1424

The Community of the Realm in Scotland 1249-1424 is an ongoing project hosted by King’s College, London that seeks to provide digital editions of important Scottish documents from the middle and later medieval period. The creators of the project have begun with the Declaration of Arbroath, a seminal document in the foundation of a community of the realm of Scotland, and Regiam Majestatem, the foundational legal document for the realm. Rather than privileging stemmatic editing and its search for an archetypal version of a text, the Community of the Realm’s edition of the Declaration allows a user to compare versions of the document as it appears in different manuscript witnesses. When in comparison mode, a user can view others’ annotations or make their own. Likewise, users can view the document in Latin or in an English translation for comparison.

The project does not limit itself to just its viewer. The creators envision the platform as providing a space for discussion of Scotland in the high Middle Ages and beyond. The site provides a biweekly podcast, an active blog, multimedia videos on the history of Scotland, and the XML data they have used to create the editions. The site is free to use for non-commercial purposes.

The Public Medievalist

The Public Medievalist is a volunteer, scholar-run online magazine that treats topics on the Middle Ages that may be of interest to the general public. Taking no particular political or disciplinary stance, the magazine invites articles on a wide array of topics, all of which touch upon the ways the Middle Ages resonate in our cultures today. Recently, the magazine has run special series on gender and sexuality, race, and games in the Middle Ages. All articles are peer reviewed by at least two scholars with an advanced degree. The magazine also publishes a podcast that treats topical intersections of contemporary culture and their intersections with the medieval period.