Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Virtual Manuscript Room (VMR)

Launched today, 8 July 2009:

Virtual Manuscript Room (VMR)
This site is the first phase of The Virtual Manuscript Room (VMR) project. In this phase, we present full digitized manuscripts from The Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern Manuscripts held at Special Collections in the University of Birmingham. This collection, previously unavailable on the web, has been designated as of national and international importance. As well as high-resolution images of each page, the VMR provides descriptions from the printed catalogue and from Special Collections' own records.

The next phase of the VMR will provide a framework to bring together digital resources related to manuscript materials (digital images, descriptions and other metadata, transcripts) in an environment which will permit libraries to add images, scholars to add and edit metadata and transcripts online, and users to access material. Two other groups of content, amounting to over 50,000 digital images of manuscripts, 500 manuscript descriptions and around 1000 pages of transcripts, will be added in the next phase of the VMR: materials relating to the New Testament and to medieval vernacular texts (Dante, Chaucer, and others)...

This site presents digital facsimiles of 71 manuscripts from the Mingana Collection, in 13209 images.

The Mingana Collection contains more than 3000 manuscripts in at least eleven languages, ranging from around the 6th to the 20th centuries. The collection is focused on manuscripts from the Middle East in Arabic, Syriac, Persian and Greek and has particular strengths in illustrated manuscripts, and early Islamic and Syraic materials (including one of the oldest Qur'ans in existence).

The core of the collection was acquired by Alphonse Mingana (1878-1937) in three trips to the Middle East between 1925 and 1929, with substantial support from Edward Cadbury. The Edward Cadbury Charitable Trust Inc. has continued to provide support for the maintenance and development of the collection, now housed in the University of Birmingham Department of Special Collections...


Image Islamic_Arabic

Islamic Arabic


Image Syriac

Syriac


Image Persian

Persian


Image Greek

Greek


Image Other
Other


Image Christian_Arabic
Christian Arabic

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