Vortrag - Anna McLaughlin

Medieval Libraries made in the Digital Age

This lecture is part of the DFG-Project „Making Mysticism“.

Books are inherently transient objects; they are given as gifts, buried, burned, stolen, loaned and sold. The tracing of the movement of an individual volume is invariably the subject of countless hours of provenance research as sale records, faded and erased inscriptions, and the handwriting of those long deceased is identified, localised and dated. In contrast, libraries as perceived as static objects. Buildings erected at a specific time and in a specific place, monuments to learning and scholarship, and immutable. But throughout the medieval period, and later throughout the centuries, libraries changed as well. This paper examines this process through the medium of the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, and queries how the digitisation of the medieval collection can enhance our understanding of both the extant collection, as well as its roots in the medieval past.