Sexy Codicology — they code for the love of codices!

What is Sexy Codicology? An independent project that aims to expand interest and awareness of medieval illuminated manuscripts to the widest audience possible through social media. They discover and explore digitized special collections around the world, hunting for beautiful illuminated manuscripts which they share on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest as well as their blog Sexy Codicology. They have also developed Maps of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts Available Online and Codicology where they explain the basics of the various types of manuscripts. And they have developed a manuscript app — the DMMapp — that links to more than 500 libraries in the world from which users can browse digitized manuscripts. DMMapp is open source and always looking for contributions in its development as well as additional library collections for new content.

Aberdeen Bestiary online

The Aberdeen Bestiary (MS 24), considered one of the finest medieval examples of the illuminated manuscript, is now available online thanks to Aberdeen University’s decades long effort to make the entire manuscript publicly available. Access to high-resolution images have given historians a close look at its gorgeous illuminations as well as a new perspective on the history and construction of the manuscript: imperfections now visible indicate numerous  scribes took part in its creation; notes and instructions between  scribes are visible in margins; thumb prints reveal frequent use as a teaching tool. In addition to the high resolution images, transcripts and translations of the original Latin text are available.

Read more about the project on the University Aberdeen project site and in a review of the project by Hyperallergic.

British Pathé on YouTube

Newsreel archive British Pathé, one of the oldest media companies in the world, has released its entire collection of films — 85,000 films — on YouTube. The release of vintage news reports and cinemagazines in high resolution will make this historic collection accessible to viewers all over the world. “Our hope is that everyone, everywhere who has a computer will see these films and enjoy them,” says Alastair White, General Manager of British Pathé. “This archive is a treasure trove unrivalled in historical and cultural significance that should never be forgotten. Uploading the films to YouTube seemed like the best way to make sure of that.”  The collection documents major events, figures, trends, sports and culture worldwide from 1896 to 1976.
Read the British Pathé press release on their blog here.

Vatican to digitize Manuscripts

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With funding from the Polonsky Foundation, the Vatican is planning on digitize its entire Ancient Manuscript collection. Last year, the Vatican and the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford collaborated on a massive digitization project to make 1.5 million manuscript pages from their collections accessible online. This huge endeavor is known as the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project. And now another sponsor (NTT Data) has stepped forward, enabling the Vatican to digitize all 82,000 manuscripts in its 135 collections — 41 million pages in all!

Read the Vatican press release here.

New Rembrandt resource

Users of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) will be happy to know that there is a new resource available to Rembrandt scholars. The Rembrandt Database is an inter-institutional research resource for information and documentation on paintings by Rembrandt – or attributed to him, either now or in the past – in museums around the world.  This new resource consolidates all the various documentation on Rembrandt into one site with the aim of becoming the first port of call for research on Rembrandt’s paintings.  Over 20 institutions partnered with the primary sponsors RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History) and the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in developing the Rembrandt Database. The developers eventually hope to include the body of information and documentation collected by the RRP into the Rembrandt Database.
The website currently contains 1700 digital documents (visual and textual material) relating to 12 paintings in 3 different museums. This number will grow in the coming period with the number of contributing museums is expected to reach 20 by 2014.

Johnson Collection of historic gardens and houses now available

The Library of Congress recently announced the digitization of the Frances Benjamin Johnston lantern slide collection.  Johnston (1864-1952) was a photographer and advocate of the garden beautiful movement.  In support of this movement, Johnston toured the US and Europe during the 1910s and 1930s, presenting lectures on historic gardens and plant life. To illustrate these lectures, Johnston used her own images. She transfered 1,134 of her black and white photographs to lantern slides which she then hand-tinted so that she could illustrate her popular lectures for garden clubs, museums and horticultural societies in color. Johnston’s photographs depict more than 200 sites — primarily private gardens but also horticultural shows, a public library and museum, and several parks. The slides focus on the American East, West, and South but also include some images in Italy, France, and England.

For more on Johnston, her lectures and lantern slides, visit the Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection page at the Library of Congress.

Machiel Kiel Photographic Archive available online

The Netherlands Institute in Turkey (NIT) has launched a site making the photographic archive of Machiel Kiel, the former director of the NIT and a renowned Dutch scholar of Ottoman architectural monuments in the Balkan countries, available to the public.  Created for the most part between the 1960s and 1990s, the Kiel Photographic Archive contains visual documentation of many monuments that have not survived or have been significantly altered during the second half of the twentieth century. The publication of Kiel’s archive by the NIT is hoped to significantly advance international research on this heritage.

As of May 2012, the NIT has almost 1300 images digitized and processed pertaining to Ottoman-Islamic architectural monuments in the Southeast-European countries (outside Turkey). The next phases will process images of monuments in Turkish Thrace and  Christian monuments and mural painting from the Ottoman period.

Research grant opportunity at Columbia University

Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library

Columbia University Libraries have announce the Libraries Research Awards Program designed to facilitate research access to the Libraries’ special collections. The Libraries will award ten grants of $2,500 each to those researchers who demonstrate a compelling need to consult Columbia Libraries special collections for their work. All US citizens are welcome to apply and  preference will be given to those outside the New York City metropolitan area. The intent of the grant is to help defer the cost of visiting the Libraries for research needs.
Participating libraries and collections include: the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Butler Library, the Lehman Social Sciences Library, the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, C. V. Starr East Asian Library, and the Libraries’ Area Studies Collections.
Applications will be accepted through January 31, 2012, with research expected to be conducted at Columbia between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013. For eligibility, application guidelines, conditions, and more
information about the special collections at Columbia University, please visit the Libraries Research Awards Program.

Frick Photoarchive available online

Scholars can now look forward to accessing the Photoarchive of the Frick Art Reference Library online.  With help from the NEH and the Henry Luce Foundation, the Frick has just released a beta version of its digital image archive containing 15,000 works of art and research documentation for 125,000 works of art. The archive is accessible at images.frick.org. You can access the Frick Reference Library collection through their online catalog FRESCO.
Established to facilitate object-oriented research, the Photoarchive is a study collection of more than one million photographic reproductions of works of art from the fourth to the mid-twentieth century by artists trained in the Western tradition.  To read more about the online Photoarchive, go to the Frick press release.

Collection spotlight: Wellcome images

Wellcome Images: 2000 Years of Human Culture is “one of the world’s richest and most unique collections, with themes ranging from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and biomedical science.” The Wellcome Collection, established by Sir Henry Wellcome to explore the connections between medicine, life and art, provide digital access to their visual materials through Wellcome Images. They currently have 40,000 high-quality digital images available. This database offers an amazing assortment of unusual and diverse material, from historical images to Tibetan Buddhist paintings, ancient Sanskrit manuscripts written on palm leaves or medical teaching devices (such as the eye defect teaching model shown here).