Penn Libraries’ OPenn Manuscript Portal Launched
Philadelphia, PA, January 6th, 2016—The Penn
Libraries is proud to announce their role as online host and one of the
leaders in a partnership that will create the country’s largest regional
collection of digitized medieval manuscripts. This role is made
possible through a grant of almost $500,000 awarded to Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis, a new project organized by the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) and funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) with generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The project, involving a total of 15 partner institutions, and led by
the Penn Libraries, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and Lehigh
University, will complete the digitization and online presentation of
virtually all of the region’s medieval manuscripts – a total of almost
160,000 pages from more than 400 individual volumes. PACSCL first
showcased the variety and depth of Philadelphia collections in a 2001
exhibition, “Leaves of Gold: Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections,”
at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibition and its associated
catalogue drew heavily upon the manuscripts to be digitized in this
project and sparked a surge in scholarly interest in the Philadelphia
collections.
The manuscripts in this project range from simple but functional
texts intended for the students of science, philosophy, and religion to
jewel-like works of art in the collections of such institutions as Bryn
Mawr College, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Free Library of
Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum.
Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis’ images and metadata will be hosted by the Penn Libraries’ manuscript portal, OPenn (http://openn.library.upenn.edu).
The images will be released into the public domain at high resolution
and available for download (by the page, manuscript, or collection) with
descriptive metadata. “Penn Libraries is thrilled to be collaborating
with the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries
to create data on the Middle Ages for the twenty-first century from
American collections,” remarked William Noel, Director of the Kislak
Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Penn
Libraries.
The project participants include the following area libraries and
museums: Bryn Mawr College, Chemical Heritage Foundation, College of
Physicians of Philadelphia, Franklin and Marshall College, Free Library
of Philadelphia (lead contributor and co-principal investigator)
Haverford College, Lehigh University (principal investigator, fiscal
agent, and dark archive), Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia
Museum of Art, Rosenbach Museum and Library, Swarthmore College, Temple
University, University of Delaware, University of Pennsylvania (OPenn
host and lead imaging/metadata center), Villanova University.
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