Digital Scriptorium

The Digital Scriptorium is prototype image database and visual union catalog of medieval and renaissance manuscripts. The project was started in 1996 by the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The model was to be from a scholar’s point of view interactive and expandable. Today it holds over 8,000 color images collected by a collaboration of institutions including University of California Berkeley and Columbia University affiliated libraries, as well as the Union Theological Seminary in New York, and the De Bellis Collection in California.

The purpose of the “Digital Scriptorium” is to unite scattered resources into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. It has evolved into a general union catalog designed for the use of paleographers, codicologists, art historians, textual scholars and other researchers. One advantage of this image database is that It provides public access to fragile materials otherwise available only within libraries.

Visit the Scriptorium : http://www.scriptorium.columbia.edu/