Taylor Institution Library
Libraries Posts

Introduction to Special Collections at the Taylorian

Welcome to the Taylor Institution Library!  The Taylor Institution is the University of Oxford’s library for Modern Foreign Languages.  It was funded by Sir Robert Taylor in a codicil to his will in 1788. Due to his will being contested, the University didn’t have access to the funds until 1834, when it was also considering …

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Digital Humanities

Seeing Materiality through a Computer’s Eyes

Following our foray into textual encoding last week, Dr Giles Bergel joined us from the Visual Geometry Group (https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/) to talk about book-historical uses of computer vision. Originally trained as a book historian, Dr Bergel gave us an overview of the theory behind it, how it has been used in humanities projects, and what computer …

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Around Oxford Hands-On Libraries Palaeography

Star-struck: A stellar session on mediaeval astronomical instruments

By Edie Young (MSt in Modern Languages) Last week, History of the Book students had the rare opportunity to examine Merton College’s collection of mediaeval astronomical instruments, which were exceptionally out of their cases. Dr Laure Miolo gave a dazzling presentation on mediaeval astrolabes, equatoria, quadrants, and astronomical manuscripts. Laure brought her very own replica …

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History of the Book students presenting their editions
Editions Taylor Reformation

Hans Sachs in Oxford 4: The Edition

By Henrike Lähnemann Preface to the Edition 2024 marks the 500th anniversary of Hans Sachs publishing in quick succession four prose dialogues which became bestsellers, particularly the first one where he has his alter ego, Hans the cobbler, debate a pompous priest – and win the day, of course. That the Taylorian was aware of …

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Palaeography

History of the Book meets Palaeography!

Of making many books there may be no end, but studying the boundless treasure of manuscripts held in the Weston Library is anything but a weariness of the flesh. That was, at least, the experience of the MML History of the Book students on Wednesday of 2nd week as they ventured up to the Horton …

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About HoB Around Oxford Hands-On Libraries Posts Student Projects

Of a Certain Type: Dialogues and Dancing Death in the Bodleian Bibliographical Press

By Molly Bray (MSt in Medieval Studies) For our first session as book-historians-in-training, we asked the question, ‘what is a book?’ Is it the form, the function? Now, for our second session, we get to see and, indeed, operate the mechanics that make one. Held behind a large wooden door and the once-accurate waymarker of …

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