Medieval Libraries of Great Britain Project Researcher

Full-time, fixed-term postdoc position for 6 months to work with Andrew Dunning on redeveloping the Medieval Libraries of Great Britain project as a sustainable, open-access digital resource for manuscript studies. Apply by 14 July 2025
Full job advert and Further Particulars

The Bodleian Libraries are seeking to appoint a researcher to join the Medieval Libraries of Great Britain project, funded by the British Academy.Based in Bodleian Special Collections at the Weston Library, the successful applicant will contribute to the redevelopment of MLGB as a sustainable, open-access digital resource for manuscript studies. This is an exceptional opportunity to work with a leading team in historical bibliography, digital humanities, and medieval library history.You will take a leading role in the reconciliation, enhancement, and integration of the MLGB dataset, working with legacy print, manuscript, and digital sources. You will apply and adapt digital methods (especially TEI XML), analyse provenance data, disambiguate historical agents, and contribute to collaborative scholarly outputs. You will present your findings at conferences and help shape the project’s intellectual direction and future development.

This is a full-time, fixed-term post for 6 months. The role is based in the Weston Library, Oxford, with up to two days of remote working per week by agreement with the line manager. The Chair of this recruitment panel will be Dr Andrew Dunning, R.W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, who can be contacted with enquiries relating to the role (andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk).

About You You will have a PhD/DPhil (or have submitted a thesis) in a field such as medieval studies, book history, or digital humanities. You will have excellent reading knowledge of Latin and expertise in manuscript studies, including palaeographical and codicological skills. You will be able to manage your own research activities independently and will have contributed to academic publications or digital research outputs. You will have excellent communication skills and be able to work collaboratively in a research team.

What We Offer: As an employee of the University of Oxford, you will enjoy a wide range of benefits, including 38 days’ paid annual leave, membership of a generous pension scheme, family-friendly policies, access to childcare services, and opportunities for flexible and hybrid working. You will have access to the University Club and sports facilities, professional development through the Researcher Hub, and a vibrant academic and cultural environment in central Oxford. More information is available at  https://hr.admin.ox.ac.uk/staff-benefits 

Diversity: Our staff and students come from all over the world, and we proudly promote a friendly and inclusive culture. Diversity is positively encouraged through diverse groups and champions, as well as a number of family-friendly policies, such as the right to apply for flexible working and support for staff returning from periods of extended absence, for example, shared parental leave.We are committed to ensuring that our recruitment processes are inclusive and accessible. If you require the job description or any other materials in an alternative format, or if you would like to request any adjustments to support you through the application or interview process, please contact the recruitment team at  recruitment@glam.ox.ac.uk.How to applyYou will be required to upload your CV and a supporting statement. Your supporting statement should list each of the essential and desirable selection criteria, as listed in the job description, and explain how you meet each one. Both documents must be submitted to be considered.We aim to provide a supportive working environment and are happy to discuss training and professional development opportunities.

Only applications received online before 12:00 midday (BST) on Monday 14 July 2025 can be considered. Interviews are expected to take place during the week commencing 28 July 2025.

Contact Person : GLAM Recruitment, Vacancy ID : 180432
Closing Date & Time : 14-Jul-2025 12:00
Pay Scale : RESEARCH GRADE 6
Contact Email : recruitment@glam.ox.ac.uk
Salary (£) : £34,982 – £40,855 per annum

180432 Job Description and Selection Criteria.pdf

On the background of the project

Consult the Holding page: Medieval Libraries of Great Britain. The Bodleian Libraries write: In October 2024, we had to take a number of specialist digital resources offline. This was a precautionary step in line with University guidance to ensure we were protected from a hostile cyber-attack.

Alternative ways to access the material

Digitised copies of the print catalogue can be found on HathiTrust:

1964 edition: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x000937945

1987 supplement: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015021966216

[1941 edition:] https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112113075359

An archived static version of the site is available at the Internet Archive, which allows you to browser the records. Date when website was withdrawn: 24 October 2024

‘Art of the Book’ Exhibition at New College, Oxford

Friday 13 June 2025, 12 noon–5PM
Lecture Room 4, New College, Oxford

New College Library is pleased to announce our exhibition for Trinity Term!

Clockwise: New College Library, Oxford, BT3.275.1, MS 281, MS 369

In ‘Art of the Book’, we explore the beauty of all things bibliographical through our wonderful special collections—from the medieval period to the present day. Expect fabulous illumination, exquisite illustrations, beautiful bindings, and some outstanding private press works.

The items will be on display in Lecture Room 4 in New College on 13 June, between 12pm and 5pm. For those unfamiliar with New College, just head to the Porters’ Lodge (located halfway down Holywell Street). There will be signs to direct visitors to the exhibition.

The exhibition is free and open to all, so please do spread the word . . .

The Radcliffe Camera within the Bodleian Libraries. Photo: Sebastian Dows-Miller

Call for Survey Responses: Enabling Digital Research on Manuscript Catalogue Data

 A new DiSc-funded project within the Bodleian Libraries is working to transform the Bodleian’s TEI-encoded medieval manuscript catalogues into accessible tabular formats such as CSV, to support innovative research in manuscript studies and the digital humanities. By making these data more user-friendly, the team hope to foster new research avenues and collaborations.

We kindly invite you to participate in a brief survey (approx. 10 minutes) to share your views on which data fields and features would best support your research needs. Your feedback will be invaluable in ensuring that our resource has the widest possible applicability.

Please take a moment to complete the survey here: https://forms.office.com/e/PyDudx3BDK

The survey will remain open until March 28th. We appreciate your input and look forward to your responses.

Crafting the Book: A One-Day Workshop Report

On 22 November, the ‘Crafting the Book’ Workshop was organised by Alison Ray (St Peter’s College) with talks and practical activities led by Sara Charles (University of London) and Eleanor Baker (Balliol College). Attended by university students, researchers, as well as library and archives staff, the workshop engaged with the history of the book and material culture of medieval manuscripts and early printed works, including their production, decoration, and provenance through signs of ownership.

The lunchtime lecture featured talks in the Weston Library by Sara and Eleanor on their recently published research on book history. First, Sara presented three case studies of early female scribes from her trade publication, The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages (Reaktion Books, August 2024). Next, Eleanor shared a range of book curses from the Middle Ages onwards, and the research process behind her new work, Book Curses (Bodleian Publishing, November 2024). The lecture was a stimulating look at the human agency involved in the lifecycle of manuscripts and early books, from production and use to their survival today.

The afternoon continued with practical workshops in the Bodleian Bibliographical Press led by Sara and Eleanor, in which participants developed a deeper understanding of contemporary artistic and reader practices through taking part in hands-on craft methods. In our first workshop, Sara guided participants in the preparation of iron gall ink and quills to practice medieval writing, and they additionally tested pigments used in illumination. For our second workshop, Eleanor led groups of participants to prepare their own book curses on bookmarks using letterpress printing and the session was accompanied by an introduction to printing techniques by press supervisor Richard Lawrence. Attendees greatly enjoyed engaging with the materiality and craft methods in manuscript and print culture.

The ‘Crafting the Book’ Workshop was held in association with Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). We are also grateful for assistance in planning and supporting the workshop on the day by Alex Franklin (Bodleian), Richard Lawrence, Tianqi Wang (St Peter’s) and Holly Smith (St Anne’s).

Alison Ray, St Peter’s College

The Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group

By Mathilde Mioche

The Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group (OMMG) is a collective of eight postgraduate students and early-career researchers who bonded in Oxford over their passion for medieval manuscripts. We host a seminar series through which we hope to gather a community of emerging scholars, from the University of Oxford and beyond, around the study of medieval books and the art of illumination.

Starting in Hilary Term 2024, OMMG seminars will take place twice monthly on Friday afternoons. We will discuss the most exciting recent research; share our own projects and ideas in a supportive environment; learn from lectures and tutorials given by experienced colleagues; and examine medieval manuscripts together during library visits.

By promoting exchange between scholars with diverse specialisms and different levels of experience, OMMG aims to turn the study of medieval books and illuminations into a more collaborative pursuit. We know that working with manuscripts is often a solitary business, where knowledge is acquired over silent and cautious one-on-one meetings with a delicate object. We want to share the wonder we experience before the material, visual and textual complexity of illuminated codices, as well as the interrogations or frustrations we have as we encounter obstacles in our research. The OMMG seminar series will provide manuscript enthusiasts with a stimulating platform for learning practical and analytical skills from peers as well as experts. We would love you to join us!

To subscribe to our mailing list, participate in library visits, propose a presentation of your research for work-in-progress meetings, or submit any queries, please write to: Elena Lichmanova.

Programme for MT 2024 (Fridays, 5pm, Merton College)

Week 1 (18 Oct, 3pm, Weston Library)  Andrew Honey | Bodleian Library: Cataloguing Medieval Bookbindings at the Bodleian: Manuscripts from Reading Abbey as a case study. Limited places, write to the email below by 16/10/2024 

Week 3                       Work in Progress Meeting Hawkins Room
1 November               
We are still accepting applications. If you would like to present your work in progress and receive our feedback, write to the email above by 28/10/2024

Week 4                       Reading Group: Audience and the Senses
8 November               K. Rudy, ‘Introduction’, Touching Parchment: How Medieval
ONLINE                       Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts (vol. 2, 2024)
Write to the email    E. Duffy, ‘Ch. 1. A Book for Lay People’, Marking the Hours: 
above to join             English People and Their Prayers, 1240-1570 (2008)

Week 5                       The New College Library Visit
15 November            Study and Discussion of Illuminated Manuscripts
                                   
Limited places, write to the email above by 8/11/2024

Week 7                       Eleanor Jackson | British Library
29 November            Medieval Women in Their Own Words: 
Mure Room                Curating the British Library Exhibition 

Week 9                       Bonus: Casual trip to see the ‘Medieval Women in Their 
14 December             Own Words’ exhibition at the British Library together
Saturday noon           
Write to the email above to join

About Us

Irina Boeru is a third-year DPhil student with a background in Medieval and Modern Languages and Medieval Studies. Her research analyses travel narratives in French and Latin illuminated manuscripts, specifically chronicles of the fifteenth-century conquest of the Canary Islands.

Fergus Bovill graduated with a BA in History of Art from the University of York. He is currently pursuing an MSt in Medieval Studies, with a dissertation on the assemblage of medieval manuscript cuttings into albums by nineteenth-century bibliophiles and connoisseurs.

Charly Driscoll completed an MSc in Book History and Material Culture at the University of Edinburgh and is now studying for a DPhil in Medieval English. Her project investigates how the material features of medieval manuscripts reveal their individual histories.

Elena Lichmanova is a third-year DPhil student with a background in History of Art and Medieval Studies. Her research examines the origins and early history of marginalia in medieval manuscripts, focusing on illuminated English Psalters of the thirteenth century.

Mathilde Mioche completed an MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture with a dissertation on illuminated Insular Gospels. She is currently preparing a doctoral project on the formal and medial mutations of the Dance of Death since its emergence in the fifteenth century.

Ana de Oliveira Dias is a historian of early medieval visual and intellectual culture with a specialisation in manuscript studies. She received a PhD in Medieval History from Durham University in 2019 and is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the project Crafting Documents, c. 500—c. 800 CE at the University of Oxford.

Celeste Pan is a third-year DPhil student with a background in English and Medieval Studies. Her research considers the production of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts in medieval northern Europe, specifically a group of liturgical Bibles from the Rheno-Mosan region.

Klara Zhao is a first-year MPhil student in Egyptology preparing a dissertation inspired by Umberto Eco’s Infinity of Lists. She developed a special interest in medieval French poetry during her BA in French and Linguistics, which she continues to nurture.

Image: Saint Augustine teaching. Paris, Bibl. Mazarine, MS 616, fol. 1r.

Crafting the Book: A One-Day Workshop

Date: Friday, 22 November 2024

‘Crafting the Book’ is a one-day workshop aimed at current Oxford University students with an academic interest in the history of the book and material culture of medieval manuscripts and early printed texts, including their production, decoration, and provenance through signs of ownership. They will engage with historic materials and develop a deeper understanding of contemporary artistic and reader practices through taking part in hands-on activities with craft methods.

Lunchtime Lecture: Sir Victor Blank Lecture Theatre at the Weston Library, 1-2pm (BOOK HERE)

Talks by expert speakers Sara Charles and Eleanor Baker with focus on their wide-ranging research on medieval illumination, calligraphy, and early printing techniques. Sara is currently a PhD student at the Institute of English Studies studying manuscript production in the Latin Christian world, and has a forthcoming trade history book, The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages (Reaktion Books, August 2024). Eleanor is currently the English Subject Lead for the University of Oxford’s Astrophoria Foundation Year, with a forthcoming trade history book, Book Curses (Bodleian Publishing, November 2024). The lunchtime lecture is free to attend.

Practical Workshops: Bodleian Bibliographical Press (FULLY BOOKED – contact the organiser to be added to the waiting list)

Workshop 1: Calligraphy Workshop led by Sara Charles taking place at 2.15pm on Friday, 22 November 2024 in the Bibliographic Press room located in the Old Bodleian Library. Sara is leading a practical session on making and writing with iron gall ink as well as painting on parchment.

Workshop 2: Letterpress Workshop led by Eleanor Baker taking place at 4pm on Friday, 22 November 2024 in the Bibliographic Press room located in the Old Bodleian Library. Eleanor is leading a practical session on crafting book curses with early printing techniques.

There is a £6 registration fee to attend each workshop or £12 for both (please bring cash or contact organiser) and each workshop will last roughly 1.5 hours.

Please contact event organiser Alison Ray (St Peter’s College Archivist) with any questions.

‘Crafting the Book’ is generously supported by the Oxford Medieval Studies Small Grant Scheme.

Medieval MSS Support Group at the Weston Library

We are pleased to trial a new format, once or twice a term, in which readers of medieval manuscripts can pose questions to a mixed group of fellow readers and Bodleian curators in a friendly environment. Come with your own questions, or to see what questions other readers have!

The sort of questions you might bring are:

  • What is the place and date of origin of this MS?
  • What is the place and date of origin of this binding?
  • What does the decoration of this MS suggest?
  • What does this semi-legible inscription say?
  • Whose bookplate is this, or how could I find out?

Meetings will typically be held in the Horton Room (just across the corridor from the manuscripts reading room on the 1st floor). If you wish to pose a question, please order the relevant manuscript to the issue desk, and email the details to Matthew Holford, Tolkien Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, the day before, so that he can arrange for it to be transferred across to the Horton Room for the session. Alternatively, provide a good quality digital image that we can display on a large monitor.

In the expectation that many readers will be at the Weston Library on Fridays for the weekly Coffee Morning in the Visiting Scholars’ Centre, the next such sessions are scheduled for the following dates:

  • NEW Friday, 4 April (Horton Room) 11.30-12:30pm
  • NEW Friday, 2 May (Horton Room) 11.30-12:30pm
  • NEW Friday, 16 May (Horton Room) 11.30-12:30pm
  • NEW Friday, 30 May (Horton Room) 11.30-12:30pm
  • NEW Friday, 13 June (Horton Room) 11.30-12:30pm
  • NEW Friday, 1 August (Horton Room) 11.30-12:30pm
  • NEW Friday, 5 September (Horton Room) 11.30-12:30pm

Header image: Bodleian Library, MS. Bodl. 264, f. 96r

‘Mythical and Monstrous’ Exhibition at New College, Oxford

Tuesday 4 June 2024, 12 noon–4PM
Lecture Room 6, New College, Oxford

We are delighted to announce New College Library’s upcoming exhibition ‘Mythical and Monstrous: Fantastical Creatures at New College Library’.

Hunt for weird and wonderful beasts in items from the College’s fabulous special collections, from dragons and unicorns, to centaurs, blemmyes, and merpeople.

Among the wide variety of items on display will be a beautiful thirteenth-century Psalter, a fantastic fourteenth-century apocalypse manuscript, a famous fifteenth-century chronicle, and a spectacular sixteenth-century astronomical text.

Discover how depictions and understandings of mythical monsters changed over time and explore what these creatures reveal about how people saw themselves and the societies in which they lived.

New College Library, Oxford MS 284, f. 21r
New College Library, Oxford MS 65, f. 30 r

The exhibition is free and open to all. Signs will be in place to direct visitors to the exhibition from the Porters’ Lodge, located halfway down Holywell Street.

If you have any questions, please email library@new.ox.ac.uk.

2024 Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference in Review

The 2024 Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference, hosted by the Maison Française d’Oxford, took place this past Monday and Tuesday, the 8th and 9th of April.

Since 2005, the OMGC has been an annual forum for graduate scholars from Oxford and beyond to share their research. The two-day conference brought together rising medievalists from Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Canada, France, Switzerland, and the UK and featured panels on divine affectivity, scribes and songs, visual signs, objects and collections, palaeography, and codicology.

Professor Henrike Lähnemann (Oxford) heralded the start of the conference on Monday morning with fanfare from the Oxford Medieval Studies trumpet – an appropriate opening to the conference, which was themed around ‘signs and scripts.’ United by the semiotic theme, participants found unexpected connections between a diverse set of presentations.

Professor Henrike Lähnemann playing her OMS trumpet in the Maison Française d’Oxford auditorium.

Professor Sophie Page (UCL) delivered her keynote presentation “Magic Signs and Censored Scripts in Medieval Europe,” closing the first day of papers. Her keynote delved into the syncretic texts of medieval magic, the efficacy of which required proper ritual performance – careful attention to the details of diagrams, auspicious star and cosmological signs, and specific material components.

Magic circle from the De secretis spirituum planetis in which the practitioner stands to summon planetary angels. Collection of alchemical, technical, medical, magic, and divinatory tracts (Miscellanae Alchemica XII), late 15th century. Wellcome Collection, MS 517, f. 234v.

Professor Page’s keynote dovetailed with Ellen Hausner’s (Oxford) paper on the alchemical images and text of the Ripley Scroll, which communicate a sense of time and space as core alchemical concepts trickle down from divine creation to the corporeal world. Signs and symbols are concentrations of meaning. Even small signifiers (although the scroll is over 2.6 meters long!) can signify immense, cosmological ideas.

As exemplified by Marlene Schilling’s (Oxford) paper on devotion to personified liturgical days in the prayer books of northern German convents, signs and scripts also have the power to lend physicality, visuality, and agency to concepts. Signs and scripts are means of power and community creation and consolidation. Or as Wilhelm Lungar (Stockholm) put it in his paper ‘Communicating Identity on Scandinavian Monastic Seals in the Middle Ages,’ objects like seals, as both historically situated artefacts and texts, mediate representation, identity, and authority.

From left to right: presentations by Elena Lichmanova (Oxford), Wilhelm Lungar (Stockholm), and Corinne Clark (Geneva).

The challenge of interpretation and an embrace of plural perspectives was a through-line for the conference, sparking rich, generative conversation. In her paper, ‘Mirror Writing and the Art of Self Reflection,’ Elena Lichmanova (Oxford) asked why and how offensive phrases like tu es asin[us] (‘you are an ass’) could be included in the thirteenth-century Rutland Psalter and surveyed the ways artists created nuances of meaning by manipulating the direction of script. Corinne Clark’s (Geneva) presentation on the life of St. Margaret considered the symbolism and mixed hagiographic reception of the saint’s battle with a dragon in which she is consumed by the demonic beast, erupting from its abdomen. Both topics inspired collaborative thinking among participants and emphasized the importance of analytical parallax to deepen our understanding of images and texts controversial and cryptic even to contemporaries.

As Megan Gorsalitz (Queen’s University, Kingston) made clear in her presentation on Old English riddles, mindless consumption steals meaning and risks careless, uncritical perpetuation. Signs and scripts require careful reflection of the manifold voices and identities they represent as well as those they conceal.

Detail of illuminated moth in decorated border. Book of Hours of King Charles VIII, 15th century. Utopia, armarium codicum bibliophilorum, Cod. 111, f. 96r.

A moth ate words. It seemed to me / a strange occasion, when I inquired about that wonder, / that the worm swallowed the riddle of certain men, / a thief in the darkness, the glorious pronouncement / and its strong foundation. The stealing guest was not / one whit the wiser, for all those words he swallowed.

Exeter Book Riddle 47

Charlotte Wood (Oxford), Marc Lawson (Trinity College Dublin), and Ilari Aalto (Turku) all grappled with the difficulties of studying oft-overlooked material culture. For Wood, whose paper focused on comb placement in Anglo-Saxon cremations, the significance of deliberately broken comb-ends in Anglo-Saxon burial urns remains elusive but exciting for their potential to tell us more about funerary practices. In his paper on brickmakers’ marks in late medieval Finland, Aalto suggested explanations for marks found in churches, which may simultaneously represent saints as an allusion to brickmakers’ names and act as a remembrance of the artisan embedded in the church. Drawing upon visual culture, written references, and extant examples of early Irish book satchels, Lawson demonstrated the prevalence of book satchels and suggested a more complex understanding of manuscript binding and use in early medieval Ireland.

The conference also featured a comprehensive selection of case studies exploring signs of manuscript creation, composition, authorship, revision, genre, and punctuation. Peter Fraundorfer’s (Trinity College Dublin) paper on a sammelband produced for Reichenau Abbey considered what the text’s language and contents can tell us about its author and intended readership, while Sebastian Dows-Miller (Oxford) took a statistical approach to the relationship between composition and authorship, identifying changes in scribal hand through changes in abbreviation frequency. In her presentation on Carthusian marginalia in The Book of Margery Kempe, Lucy Dallas (East Anglia) discussed the reception and reworking of the text for the monks and Elliot Vale’s paper on CCCC MS 201 problematized modern translations of vernacular works in which poetry and prose blend in structural and punctuation.

Margaret of Antioch emerging from the defeated dragon with the sign of the cross. Book of Hours, 15th century. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Rawl. liturg. e. 12, fol. 149v.

Papers by Jemima Bennett (Kent and Bodleian Libraries), Rhiannon Warren (Cambridge), Max Hello (Paris 1 – HiCSA), and Thomas Phillips (Bristol) all focused on the collection, manipulation, recycle, reconstruction, and aesthetics of manuscripts. Bennett’s work on fifteenth-century Oxford bookbinding continued the theme of plural interpretations as she discussed patterns and possible reasoning behind the recycle of manuscript fragments by collectors. Similarly, Phillips focused on recovering lost script from fragments of the Anglo-Saxon Office of St. Alban. Warren and Hello also touched on signs of manuscript manipulation, reuse, and changing aesthetic preferences in their respective presentations on Árni Magnússon’s Icelandic manuscript collection and ornamentation in Merovingian book writing. Complementing the presentations on material culture, the palaeography and codicology sessions reinforced the materiality of manuscripts and fluidity of text.

From left to right: presentations by Max Hello (Paris 1 – HiCSA), Jemima Bennett (Kent and Bodleian Libraries), and Sebastian Dows-Miller (Oxford).

Presentations aside, the congenial atmosphere and enthusiasm of the participants made for constructive knowledge exchange and an enjoyable two days of conversation. From the 2024 OMGC committee, thank you to all who attended. The committee is also excited to announce that the theme for the 2025 Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference will be Magic, Rituals, and Ceremonies! Until then, keep an eye on the OMGC blog for posts by this year’s presenters.

The 2024 OMGC committee (Katherine Beard, Ashley Castelino, Emma-Catherine Wilson, Kate McKee, Ryan Mealiffe, Mary O’Connor, and Eugenia Vorobeva) thank our sponsors for making this year’s conference possible.

The 2024 Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference was presented in association with the Maison Française d’ Oxford, the Oxford Festival of the Arts, the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature (Medium Ævum), the Oxford Faculty of Music, the Oxford Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford Medieval Studies (OMS), and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).

Header Image: The White Hart, pub sign (colorized), ca. 1750. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, W.69:2-1938. Photoshopped onto background of Merton Street, Oxford.

St John’s Digitization Project

(By Sophie Bacchus-Waterman, Special Collections Photographer, St John’s College)

As Special Collections Photographer for the Digitization Project at St John’s College, I photograph the manuscripts and early printed books from our Special Collections. Given that we have over 20,000 early printed books and over 300 manuscripts, and it would be impossible for one person to digitize them all, we have devised a shortlist of items which will be made available online during this project. These might be manuscripts with significant cultural or historic value, interesting provenance, unique texts, or items that are regularly requested by researchers. Several items have already been made available on Digital Bodleian, and more are being added regularly.

Grazer Conservation Cradle

Books being photographed are placed onto the Grazer Conservation Cradle. The cradle is set to a 120° opening angle. If a book is not able to be opened at that angle, it is supported with foam wedges. Along the side of the cradle is a vacuum bar, on which the page being photographed is placed. Each page of the book being photographed is placed onto the vacuum bar, which, when switched on, acts like a vacuum and gently pulls the page into place. Along the vacuum bar is a ruler, which allows anyone viewing the book on Digital Bodleian to see its size. The colour swatch lets me keep the lighting and colour accurate from page to page.

Vacuum bar, ruler, and colour swatch on the cradle

Images are taken with a PhaseOne camera, which is directly parallel to the page being photographed. The camera can be moved closer or further away using a control panel on the side of the cradle. If I’m working with a smaller book, for instance, the camera might need to be closer to the cradle than if I’m working with a larger book. The cradle can also be adjusted with the control panel, and moved up or down as necessary, or left and right with a small dial. As I move through a book, the cradle might need be adjusted accordingly.

Control panel and dial for adjusting the cradle

Besides photographing the internals of our books, I also photograph the externals, using a flatbed and a wall-mounted Canon camera, in the setup seen in the photograph below.

MS 164, a 14th century French manuscript with a velvet binding, on the flatbed

The book is placed on the flatbed, and I photograph its front and back covers. It is also placed on its fore edge and spine, carefully supported with small towers of foam blocks on either side, which are covered with black cloth. I also include a ruler and colour swatch in photos of the externals, for the same reason as they are included in the internal shots.

Photographing MS 61

MS 61 was always high on our priority list for items to be digitized. A 13th century bestiary made in York, richly illuminated, MS 61 is one of the jewels of our Special Collections. If you would like to read more about it, you can see its catalogue description on Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries, encoded by my colleague, Sian Witherden.

I knew that MS 61 would initially pose challenges, due to its extensive use of gold leaf. Each illumination is backed with a thick ground of gold leaf, which reflects light when photographed. Given the amount of gold on certain folios, the light reflected in such a way that the gold looked white, an effect known as “specular highlights”, as seen in the below left photograph. In order to photograph a manuscript with extensive gold leaf, the lamps in the Photography Studio must be pointed upwards, away from the cradle. The light then bounces off the ceiling and onto the gold leaf, as seen in the below right photograph.

St John’s College, MS 61, fol. 9r

Once the issue of lighting the gold leaf was resolved, MS 61 was a dream to work with. For an 800-year-old manuscript, it was incredibly easy to handle. Written on high quality vellum, it was sturdy, its pages turned easily, and its modern binding meant that it was happy to open to the 120° angle of the cradle. As with the other books I’ve worked with so far, MS 61 was placed onto the cradle – it opened easily, and was handled with the usual care I handle the Special Collections items, but it didn’t need any extra support while out.

As I moved through the manuscript, I was struck by the incredible illuminations throughout it. Even after centuries, it is in a stunning condition, almost as if it had been made yesterday. In order to accommodate the manuscript, I moved the cradle left and right, and up and down, as needed, so that it was resting comfortably on the cradle. Above everything else, the preservation of whatever book I am working with is paramount to the project. Luckily, MS 61 didn’t require any extra support, or prove difficult at all.

The social media response to MS 61 being digitized was astounding, but also hardly surprising. MS 61 is one of the most beautiful and treasured items in our collection, and a lot of people have been excited to see it online. Not only is it a privilege to work with such stunning and rare books in my role, but knowing that the Digitization Project is facilitating research and introducing people to our collection online makes it all the more rewarding.

If you would like to see more of our collection, please visit our Digital Library, where you can read more about our collection, and see what has already been made available to view online. If you would like to read more about MS 61, take a look at this Book of the Month blog post here.