Last week, we had the opportunity to have our session on ‘Caring for Collections’ and ‘Library Management’ at the charming Old Library at St Edmund Hall, an apt location given the date coinciding with the feast day of St Edmund. James Howarth, the librarian, first gave us an introduction on the early history of the …
Category: Hands-On
Latin Palaeography, or How to Write a Book
By Charlotte Copeman Having spent the last five weeks building up our knowledge of manuscripts from paper, to ink, to assembly, to binding, last week’s Latin palaeography session finally brought us to the styling and construction of the letters and words themselves. Our crash-course began with Dr Laure Miolo introducing us to the three principal …
Structures of the Manuscript, or What Makes a Book
By Ksenia Dugaeva In our ‘Structures of the manuscript book’ seminar last week, we continued our foray into understanding how manuscripts come together – focusing in this session on the journey from sheet to codex to bound book. All of us browse, read, and generally handle books in our daily and academic lives, and a …
Parchment, Paper, Pigments & Ink
By Thomas Godfrey Understanding materiality can teach us a lot about a manuscript. Seeing as we will be looking at many manuscripts over the course of the year, we were granted the opportunity to get to grips with the fundamentals of how they are made. Through attending a workshop led by Andrew Honey, Robert Minte, …
“worten · ald mit werken” – Reminiscing about manuscripts, group projects and Covid
A short report about my first time meeting Bodleian Library MS. Germ. e. 5 by Marlene Schilling To be honest, I had nearly forgotten about Bodleian Library Ms. Germ. e. 5 in the 18 month since handing in, in March 2021, my MSt. in Modern Languages Method Option essay that focused on this particular 14th century manuscript. I had spent …
Colin Franklin Prize in Book Collecting
Download entry form (Word) The Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book offers a prize to an undergraduate or postgraduate student of the University of Oxford for a collection of books or other printed materials. Age, size and monetary value of the collection will not be relevant criteria; the aim is to champion collecting …
Printing Prose. Lecture Series on Early German Prose
The lecture series by Henrike Lähnemann (Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics) in Michaelmas Term 2022 at the Taylor Institution Library, Room 2, discusses German prose texts published in the first hundred years of printing. This includes a number of iconic texts written earlier such as the ‘Ackermann von Böhmen’ or transformed from verse …
Videocast series ‘Parchment and Paper’
The videocast series Parchment and Paper is dedicated to the treasures of the college library at Queen’s. In episode 3 of series 3, Dr Conor O’Brien (Associate Professor in the Early Mediaeval History of the British Isles and North Atlantic World, and Tutorial Fellow in History at Queen’s: https://www.queens.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-conor-o%E2%80%99brien) joins Matthew Shaw (College Librarian at Queen’s: https://www.queens.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-gabriele-rota) …
Pergament in der Praxis
Versuche zur mittelalterlichen Herstellungstechnik und Oberflächenbehandlung von Pergament Guest blog post by Anna Vogel, Master Student at the University of Freiburg in the MARS degree. Anna Vogel studiert Mittelalter- und Renaissancestudien an der Universität Freiburg. Ihr Hauptinteressensgebiet sind die handwerklichen Techniken der historischen Buchherstellung. Im August und September 2021 bekam sie die Möglichkeit, gemeinsam mit …
Looking at the Goostly Psalmes
Jane Eagan and Matthew Shaw Librarians and conservators see a lot of books. As such, they are often only passing acquaintances at best with many of them, and large numbers in their collection or care are positively strangers. It’s also unusual to know much at all about what researchers do with the books that they …