Very good news from Switzerland, which has launched the e-codices site:
The goal of e-codices is to provide access to the medieval manuscripts of Switzerland via a virtual library. On the e-codices site, complete digital reproductions of the manuscripts are linked with corresponding scholarly descriptions. Our aim is to serve not only manuscript researchers, but also interested members of the general public.
At the moment, the virtual library contains 570 manuscripts from 24 different libraries. The virtual library will be continuously updated and extended.
This is what we want to see; the mss becoming accessible to us all. Well done the Swiss!
When you access the site, they want you to click to “accept terms”. Yes, well, that is just silly, lads — how are you going to enforce that on someone in Turkmenistan? But at least they have recognised that the world and his wife use English!
I did a search for ‘Eusebius’, and up come various catalogue entries. The mss seem to be mostly Latin; descriptions were in German, but none the worse for that. ‘Tertullian’ brought up no results. ‘Origen’ gave nothing; ‘Origenes’ 8 mss. Interestingly this included a “Martin Bodmer” result — is it possible that all the Bodmer mss are now online? If so, that would be very exciting!
And … there are 74 Bodmer mss online. I wonder what treasures this contains?
H/t Open Access Manuscript Library of Switzerland at Charles Ellwood Jones.
Hi Roger,
Thanks for keeping an eye on the news! The Turks have this kind of website too, and even an English version ! It works fine but for the search one has to spell his Arabic or Persian names the Turkish way. Good luck !
http://www.yazmalar.gov.tr
Thank you, Emily, for this update. I wonder if this includes Greek mss?
What is the Turkish way to spell Arabic? Do you have a couple of examples?