Another Berkeley Sunsite, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Digital Scriptorium is a collaborative venture from the Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley) and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University. Currently containing over 2,000 manuscripts and documents from the eighth through the fifteenth century, the Scriptorium plans to continue adding medieval and early Renaissance manuscripts from the two libraries and also Barnard College, Teachers College, Union Theological Seminary, UC Berkeley's Music Library, the Robbins Collection, and eventually, other institutions in the US and Europe. The current database will be made available when the SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) manuscript description standard is created. At present, users can search the test database. First-time visitors and less Internet-savvy researchers may find the accompanying documentation quite technical and a bit overwhelming, and they will want to devote some extra time to get acquainted with the various searchable fields. Nonetheless, the image quality is excellent and the amount of metadata is impressive. The Digital Scriptorium promises to be an invaluable resource for medieval and renaissance scholars.
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