Manuscripts on the web: The British Library

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty.

So, I like to go looking around the web for pretty pictures. One type of pretty picture I look for is illuminated manuscript images. One thing that I've found is that several institutions have done a great job digitizing images and making them available. Here are some of the places I've found.

Let's start with the big one. The British Library. The British Library, of course, has one of the best collections in the world. The Bibliotheque Nationale and the Vatican Library are the only close contenders I can think of.

The British Library is fairly generous, there are three ways they make manuscripts available. The big one is their Catalogue of Illuminated manuscripts. Thousands of manuscripts are cataloged here. (Over 1500 from the Harley collection alone.) Each manuscript has a upwards to twenty or so images available. The down side is that they are going methodically through the collections, and they haven't included the Cotton or Additional Manuscript collections yet, and that is where a lot of the really good stuff is.

Equally impressive is their Online Gallery of illuminated manuscripts. This used to be part of their Collect Britain site, and focused on manuscripts made in Britain. Each page is treated as separate work, but you can search by shelfmark. There are plenty of images of little known manuscripts. There are also illuminated manuscript images scattered through some of the other galleries. The Online Galleries also has a Virtual Books section with in depth looks at several important books including a late 17th cent Ethiopian Bible, the "Golf Book, the Luttrell Psalter, the Golden Haggadah, a 15th Century Hebrew Bible from Lisbon, the Sforza Hours, the Sherborne Missal, and the Lindisfarne Gospels. I can't make this feature work due to limitations of my computer and my lack of Geek skills.

A final place to look for images is the Images Online. This is primarily intended as a site to sell high quality images, but their previews are good enough quality for casual browsing. You can find images from many manuscripts not found at the other Brirish Library sites.

Finally for the British Library if you are looking for information on manuscripts, but not images, there is the Manuscript Catalogue. The entries in the catalog range from fairly complete articles, with bibliography to a few words in Latin.

When worlds collide.

I haven't mentioned it here before, but I have spent some time over the last couple of months doing volunteer work at the special collections department of a local university library. I have been considering a change of career and going to library school. Before I jumped off that bridge, though, I thought I should have some idea of what doing library work was actually like. I also thought that it would be a great way to find people to write letters of recommendation for me.

My first project has been to inventory the library's World War I collection. They started the collection years ago, based, in part, on the fact that almost the entire male student body enlisted en masse and became part of the Rainbow Division. The donations of several alumni of their war memorabilia made a nice start and the library has, over the years, actively collected things since. They have a lot photograph and letter collections, a German code book, various logs, and lots of ephemera and other things that old men have saved from their youthful adventures. One of the collections they acquired along the was of a army surgeon named William Jason Mixter.

One of the standard instruments used in surgery is the mixter right angle clamp, seen here. Much of the instrumentation for modern surgery was developed in the first half of the 20th century, and most instruments are named after the person who developed them. Since Mixter is an unusual name, I was intrigued. A quick Google search confirmed that William Jason Mixter was almost certainly the inventor of the mixter right angle. What's more, he was a major figure in the history of neurosurgery. He was the first head of Neurosurgery at Massachusetts General, and a pioneer in back surgery. He was the first to realize that herniated discs could pain by compressing nerve roots and the spinal cord, and along with Joseph Barr, did the first successful discectomy.

The library did not buy the Mixter collection because of Mixter's importance in the history of neurosurgery, indeed they were unaware of it. They bought it because contained some interesting items that fit well with rest of the World War I collection. Nevertheless, they did end up with some stuff that was much cooler than they realized. And I got an unexpected collision of two of the different worlds in which I live.


William Jason Mixter

Libraries

The sword fighting lessons Sophia and I go to on Tuesdays are held at the Tulsa Library. We went down early today so that I could turn in an application to the library. I'm looking for a part time gig shelving or any thing like that. The pay sucks, but I am seriously considering going back to school to get an MLS (Master of Library Science), and would like some experiencing working in a library before I jump off the deep end, even if it is just scut work. Anyway, the lesson got bumped by a library event, but they forgot to notify us. Oh well, half a day wasted. On the birding front, Sophia pointed out that my lists didn't have House Sparrows on them. Of course we've seen them, and heard them, and cursed them. Make that 28 year birds for the family. I'm too tired to do a manuscript tonight. Maybe two tomorrow.