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9:33 am, September 22, 2008
Library to digitise Middle English manuscripts
By Claire Shoesmith
The University of Manchester’s John Rylands University Library is to digitise its internationally renowned collection of more than 40 Middle English manuscripts, making some of the world’s greatest medieval literary riches available on the internet.
Thanks to £85,000 in funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee, the public will for the first time get free unlimited access to treasures including one of the earliest existing manuscripts of the complete Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, 500-year-old translations of the Bible into English and one of England’s oldest recipe books.
Other key works to be digitised and uploaded to the John Rylands Library website will be John Lydgate’s two major poems, the “Troy Book” and “Fall of Princes”.
The work, which will be carried out using a high definition camera, begins in October this year and will be completed in late 2009.
Jan Wilkinson, director of the John Rylands Library, said: “The Library’s Middle English manuscripts are a research resource of immense significance. Yet the manuscripts are inherently fragile, and until now access to them has been restricted by the lack of digital copies. Digitisation will make them available to everyone.
“For the first time it will be possible to compare our manuscripts directly with other versions of the texts in libraries located across the world, opening up opportunities for new areas of research.
“We hope that this will be the beginning of a wider digitisation programme, which will unlock the tremendous potential of our medieval manuscripts and printed books, for the benefit of the academic community and the wider public.”
Comments? cshoesmith@crain.com
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