Hannah Norton Blog 6: Free Library of Philadelphia, Medieval Manuscripts Collection

The Free Library of Philadelphia received an IMLS grant to digitize portions of their manuscript collection for wider access of these rare materials. The collection includes bibles and other religious works, political propaganda, and poetry from 1000 to 1500 A.D. The collection is presented as a traditional exhibit, with educational text describing the basics of how manuscripts were made and used and a “tour” of exhibit highlights, and is also searchable simply as a collection.

Collection Principles
The entire physical collection at the Rare Book Department of the Free Library contains 255 codices, 2,000 leaves and fragments with text and illuminating images, and 1,000 leaves with text only from the time period. It includes collections donated by John Federick Lewis and Joseph E. Widener, both in the 1930s. The digital “tour” of the collection shows artifacts that are described as being particularly notable, but beyond this there is no information provided about how the 3,055 images in the digital collection were selected from the larger physical collection. Presumably the digital materials are those that are of most interest aesthetically or historically.

Object Characteristics
Objects include scanned images from both complete codices and individual leaves. Each digital object represents one two-page spread from the physical original. Zooming and panning capabilities are available in three different sizes, using flash. Files range in size from 42MB to 650MB including large items (11 x 14 inches images and up) scanned at 400 ppi and smaller items (11 x 13 inches and smaller) scanned at 600 ppi.

Metadata
The metadata does a good job of describing each object and its historical context. Fields include: unique identifier, folio (presumably this would help you locate the item in the physical collection), date range, generic title, country, city, creator, script (i.e. type of writing), dimensions, and subjects. Each image has links to other images from the same “shelfmark” (document) and links to the catalog record for the entire document which includes further descriptive metadata and notes. Technical metadata is not included for individual images, but an in-depth description of the project as a whole is provided elsewhere. This project description includes recommendations for optimal web viewing and documentation of workflows for description, cataloging, and the imaging process.

Intended Audience
In their description of the IMLS grant, the library explains that their aim in digitizing these materials was both to fulfill their duty as a public institution of making them more broadly accessible and to “dramatically increase awareness” of these resources. They suggest that these medieval and Renaissance manuscripts would be useful and interesting to the scholarly community and the general public. The collection as presented through the Free Library’s website seems geared primarily towards to the audience of interested amateurs, with its extensive explanations, glossary, and bibliography of other resources. However, based on the robust searching options and the ability to view the images at magnification, I think they would be useful to the scholarly community as well. Scholarly access if further aided by the fact the contents of this digital collection are also available through the Digital Scriptorium, a database that incorporates manuscript collections from many major libraries and museums.

Overall, I think this is quite a useful collection. Because it comes out of an IMLS grant, it includes ample documentation of the imaging process and rationale for the project. The notes provided with most, if not all, of the digital images help put them into historical context and complements the information included in the metadata.