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The diaries of Queen Victoria, totaling 47,000 pages and running from the age of 13 until her death, have been digitized. The site will be free to UK users, but open access for the rest of the world only runs through the end of June.
posted by Horace Rumpole on May 24, 2012 - 33 comments

A researcher at St. Andrews University is using a tool called a densitometer to measure which pages in medieval manuscripts are the dirtiest, and therefore the most frequently read. The complete (and well-illustrated) study is available online from the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Apr 24, 2012 - 12 comments

Thanks to a record-breaking £9 million fundraising effort, the British Library has acquired (and fully digitized) the St. Cuthbert Gospel. The manuscript, buried with the eponymous saint in 698 AD, is the oldest European book to survive fully intact. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Apr 16, 2012 - 25 comments

The Morgan Library Black Hours, one of the world's most beautiful and striking illuminated manuscripts, has been digitized in its entirety. Richly decorated in blue and gold on black vellum, it is one of a surviving handful of such manuscripts produced in late 15th century Bruges. (Poorer quality, but still interesting, images of another such work, the Black Hours of Charles the Bold, are also online.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Nov 19, 2011 - 21 comments

Signs & Symbols: Decoding Mediaeval & Renaissance Iconography. An online exhibition from the Dunedin Public Library. Does what is implied on the tin, if you have a grounding in the history of tin-decoration.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Nov 13, 2011 - 11 comments

Treasures of the Bodleian. Oxford University's Bodleian Library will move into a substantially renovated home in 2015. In preparation, it has put online a selection of highlights from the collection, ranging from papyri to Penguins. You can vote for your favorite treasure, and the top vote-getter will go on display when the library reopens.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Oct 5, 2011 - 8 comments

In honor of the museum's 50th anniversary, the Anne Frank House has created a virtual tour of the Secret Annex and the rest of the house. The complete manuscript of Anne's diary has also gone on display at the museum for the first time.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Apr 29, 2010 - 18 comments

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas today announced that it has acquired the papers of David Foster Wallace. The collection includes "manuscript materials for Wallace's books, stories and essays; research materials; Wallace's college and graduate school writings; juvenilia, including poems, stories and letters; teaching materials and books." The Center's blog has more details.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Mar 8, 2010 - 25 comments

Timelines: Sources from History is a decade-by-decade visual index to the holdings of the British Library from the 1210s to the present.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Jan 30, 2010 - 12 comments

Visitors to the Morgan Library in New York will have a rare opportunity to view one of the great masterworks of medieval illumination, the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. But if you don't have a chance to visit, all 157 miniatures have been digitized.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Jan 24, 2010 - 24 comments

An expert in Elizabethan handwriting is attempting to decipher the inscriptions on a 400-year-old slate tablet discovered by archaeologists working at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. Want to take a crack at it yourself? First, you're going to want to take English Handwriting, 1500-1700: An Online Course. Then, keep your skills sharp with a daily dose of Early Modern Paleography. (This week's images will be well known to a certain MeFite.)
posted by Horace Rumpole on Jan 14, 2010 - 49 comments

Libraries' Surprising Special Collections. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Mar 3, 2009 - 44 comments