| Paper 216-a | Labeculae Vivae: A Reference Library of Stains Found on Medieval Manuscripts
(Language: English)
Erin Connelly, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Alberto Campagnolo, Preservation Research & Testing Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC
Index terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography, Science, Technology |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
Stains on manuscripts are signs indicative of their past lives left by time and usage. Reading these signals in concert with conventional information gathered from manuscripts can add to our understanding of the history and use of an object. This project, supported by a microgrant from the Council on Library and Information Resources, and run as a preliminary pilot study, provides an identified, open-access database of a number of commonly-found stains in order to help researchers answer questions such as manuscript provenance, transmission, material culture, as well as scientific applications for arts questions and the innovative uses of multi-spectral imaging to acquire new knowledge. This paper will present the results of the investigation and demonstrate best practices using the database for a diverse audience of scholars.
Paper -b:
The purpose of this paper is to explore how medieval people had access to library collections, which includes the different lending and borrowing methods that were in place. There have been several studies of medieval libraries from general surveys to more specific studies since the early 20th century, but most are concerned with the architecture and contents of such libraries. However, intra-institutional and inter-institutional access to a collection is a fundamental characteristic of medieval and modern libraries. Much like their modern counterparts, medieval libraries were a place of information dissemination: the question of access is how that information reached literate patrons and entered the wider community. It is my hope that this paper will highlight the relationship between why access to medieval libraries is significant and the ways in which this access was granted.
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