Such is the case in a new website: Digital Manuscripts in the Classroom – the result of intensive collaboration between faculty staff and library staff of Leiden University.ĭigital Manuscripts in the Classroom is an initiative of Erik Kwakkel, former Scaliger Professor at Leiden University. ![]() The IIIF manifests that have been added to the metadata of the manuscripts offer new opportunities in combining the viewing experience with contextual information. In October 2020 a new technique ( IIIF) was implemented in Digital Collections, which enhances the viewing experience for a single manuscript and also enables comparison of two or more manuscripts in the same session – even when those manuscripts are part of different repositories. The last fifteen years have seen extensive digitisation activities by heritage institutions and most of the digital images they created are accessible on the internet – where geographical distances and opening times of repositories are non-existent.ĭigital Collections, Leiden’s image repository, contains 500+ digital facsimiles of medieval manuscript books. So, what is the next-best thing to viewing manuscripts on site? ![]() However, such a library is not always close at hand, nor (sadly!) might there be enough time in a bachelor or master course to visit a special collections library. Scholars, teachers and students are most welcome to use them in our Special Collections Reading Room and lecture rooms on working days (9 a.m. Starting out more than four centuries ago, it has built a substantial collection of medieval manuscripts, comprising about 1800 codices and 1000+ fragments, most of them available for research and education. Leiden University Libraries is such a library. Hopefully the students have teachers with the right presence of mind, who can lead the way to a library with historical special collections. For a moment you may feel the presence of the past, the ‘historical sensation’ pointed out by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945), still famous for his book Autumntide of the Middle Ages. Viewing an old manuscript in a quiet library room is not unlike hearing Gregorian chant or polyphony in the acoustics of a Gothic church, for it can bring you back centuries ago in a wink. ![]() Regardless of whether they focus on medieval history, art history or literature, students should try and reach beyond their text books and readers, their introductions and abstracts.
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