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Ad Fontes

Ad Fontes is a web platform designed to train students and scholars for medieval archival work. Administered through the University of Zurich, the project requires the user to register for a free account that then allows him or her to take modules on the use of archives. Numerous modules exist, including ones on transcription, coinage, heraldry, chronology, dating, and maps. Transcription and script training focuses on several languages, including medieval Latin, German, and Scandinavian languages among others. Transcription modules include quizzes that allow a user to test their progress.

The platform is continuously updated, with new modules added every few months.

Anglo-Norman Dictionary

The Anglo-Norman Dictionary projects offers a free digital presence for the standard dictionary of Anglo-Norman French. Its first printed edition was published between 1977 and 1992. The second, revised, edition started in the late 1990s and is still ongoing: its work is published online in (bi-)yearly installments and is expected to be completed by 2029. The site provides coverage for areas of francophone activity in the British Isles from 1066 up to 1500.
The site also provides a detailed Bibliography of all Anglo-Norman primary sources currently available, an introduction to Anglo-Norman for a non-academic public, a range of searchable Anglo-Norman texts, unpublished transcriptions and academic articles.

Bibliothèque virtuelle des manuscrits médiévaux (BVMM)

The BVMM is a French-language resource that serves as a clearing house for images and data on medieval manuscripts held in institutions in Europe. Institutions range from municipal libraries and religious houses up to major research and university libraries across continental Europe. Images can sometimes be from microfilm, black and white, or in full color.

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.

CORSAIR Online Collection Catalog (The Morgan Library & Museum)

Named after Pierpont Morgan’s yacht, CORSAIR is a single database providing unified access to over 250,000 records for medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, rare and reference books, literary and historical manuscripts, music scores, ancient seals and tablets, drawings, prints, and other art objects. Records continue to be added for the balance of the collection as well as for new acquisitions.

The depth of detail is unusual for an online catalog. Many records include summaries of the content of individual letters, lengthy notes about provenance, and detailed descriptions of bindings. Specialized indexes enable researchers to find all of the Morgan’s holdings associated with a given name, date, or place. For example, with a single search a scholar interested in Dickens can find records for manuscripts and letters in the author’s hand, early printed editions of his novels, original illustrations, photographs, and personal possessions such as Dickens’ ink pot and cigar case.

CORSAIR also serves as the gateway to one of the largest repositories of medieval images on the Internet, providing access to more than 57,000 digitized images from the Morgan’s collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Users may page through every illustrated leaf within a manuscript, or search for individual images by place or date of creation, artist’s name, illustration type, and subject. The images and descriptions may be accessed directly through CORSAIR, or by visiting Images from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources

An Oxford-based research project, the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources is a dictionary of medieval Latin in the British Isles from 540CE to 1600CE based entirely on original research. Published through Brepolis, the online version presents the contents of the print dictionary in a searchable format. Drawing only on sources from the British Isles, the dictionary shows localized usages of Latin words.

There are two versions of the DMLBS. The free version is available through Logeion and can only be searched by keyword. The paid version published by Brepols has more extensive search features and is accessible through Brepolis. On that version, a user may create advanced searches that include or exclude terms as well as browse an index of headwords.

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.

Global Medieval Sourcebook

“The Global Medieval Sourcebook (GMS) is an open access teaching and research tool. It offers a flexible online display for the parallel viewing of medieval texts in their original language and in new English translations, complemented by new introductory materials.

The GMS spans one thousand years (600-1600) of literary production around the world. It contains short texts of broad interdisciplinary interest in a variety of genres, almost all of which have not previously been translated into English.”

Global Middle Ages Project

The Global Middle Ages Project, or GMAP, aims to explore the whole world of the Middle Ages, from 500 to 1500CE, by exploring peoples, places, objects, and numerous other vectors for medieval research.

The website functions as a clearinghouse for projects hosted by GMAP with links to a variety of digital humanities projects from scholars of various aspects of the Middle Ages.

Handschriftencensus

Handschriftencensus is a German-language web platform published by a team at the University of Marburg. The site functions as a directory for medieval German-language manuscripts from 750CE to 1520CE in libraries around the globe. The platform itself does not contain images, but does contain detailed catalog entries for each manuscript in addition to links to available images and the host repository’s catalog entry for a manuscipt. Users can see the nearly 900 manuscripts on the site in list format, ordered by repository, author/work, and illustration type.

The project has an active social media presence on Twitter and is continuously updated, with new additions made weekly. Users can also find a regularly updated, in-depth bibliography of secondary sources on German-language medieval texts and manuscripts. Copyrights for manuscript images obtained through the site are still retained by a manuscript’s holding institution.

Italian Paleography

From the website:

The Italian Paleography website presents 102 Italian documents and manuscripts written between 1300 and 1700, with tools for deciphering them and learning about their social, cultural, and institutional settings. The site includes: digitized images of 102 manuscripts and documents; T-Pen, a digital tool to actively transcribe manuscripts and documents;
transcriptions and background essays for each item; a selection of calligraphy books and historical manuscript maps; a handbook of Italian vernacular scripts; additional resources, including a glossary, list of abbreviations and symbols, dictionaries, and teaching materials.

Logeion

Logeion is a free online dictionary that aggregates the resources of all the Latin and Greek dictionaries available through the Perseus Classical collection in addition to other resources like the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. A user can search by headword or an inverse search and use the tabs to switch between dictionary sources, including: Lewis and Short, Gaffiot, and others. The website also provides basic corpus analysis, offering examples of the word in sentences as well as providing morphological analysis. Though not all sources in the project are medieval, some, like the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, are predominantly medieval.

Médiévistes sur le net : sources, travaux et références en ligne

Aims :
- promoting European web-based resources for mediaeval studies, particularly in the French language; enhancing the international visibility of medievalists and their work; and bridging communication barriers between scholars;
- providing a free critical index of on-line resources in the field of medieval studies for the use of scholars, students and laymen alike.

Medium

A survey of microfilms and other images of medieval manuscripts kept at the Institute de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes. Many of these reproductions are now available online, and accessible via the database. 

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 Journal, The 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.

Middle English Dictionary

Welcome to the electronic Middle English Dictionary. The print MED, completed in 2001, has been described as “the greatest achievement in medieval scholarship in America.” Its 15,000 pages offer a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500, based on the analysis of a collection of over three million citation slips, the largest collection of this kind available. This electronic version of the MED preserves all the details of the print MED, but goes far beyond this, by converting its contents into an enormous database, searchable in ways impossible within any print dictionary.

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.

Teaching Medieval Slavery and Captivity

“This website provides pedagogical resources for teachers who want to address the global history of slavery and captivity during the medieval period, broadly defined.”

The includes: “historical sources (texts, images, and audio files) that can be assigned as readings or used for in-class activities” and “a selected bibliography of scholarly works to help teachers present slavery and captivity in an appropriate, historically and culturally specific context.”

Middle English Text Series (METS)

The TEAMS Middle English Texts are published for TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages) in association with the University of Rochester by Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan. The General Editor of the series is Russell Peck of the University of Rochester. The texts are made available here by permission of the Executive Committee of TEAMS and The Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University.

The goal of the TEAMS Middle English text series is to make available to teachers and students texts which occupy an important place in the literary and cultural canon but which have not been readily available in student editions.

The focus is upon literature adjacent to that normally in print, which teachers need in compiling the syllabi they wish to teach. The editions maintain the linguistic integrity of the original works but within the parameters of modern reading conventions.

We are grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for its generous support in creating and maintaining this site.

* National History Day Selected Resource *

The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts

The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts is a resource that aggregates catalog entries and images of Hebrew manuscripts from repositories around the world. The project currently has entries for over 400,000 manuscripts of all types and genres from 123 collections; manuscripts in the collections comprise a wide range of medieval dates, from the 9th century to the 16th century. Data and images are pulled from the holding institution’s catalog. Thus, image and data quality varies among institutions. Entries are searchable by a number of qualities, including author, date, type of text, language, and many others. Links to the document’s holding institution are frequently present.

Holding institutions retain the copyright on data and images in the database and users must follow their guidelines for use. The Collection often provides links to holding institutions for copyright information.