Category Archives: resource

Shakespeare TwentyScore Now Online

Shakespeare TwentyScore is here to both make it easy to find out about any events in Australasia taking place to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and to offer support to anyone wishing to set up an event of their own.

Although the anniversary itself is on 23rd April, this site will continue to be updated throughout 2016.

Downloadable resources for schools, clubs and libraries will be added bit by bit. This will include material suitable for in-class work as well as ideas and frameworks for events for both children and adults. So please check back often to see what’s new, and go ahead and ask us for anything that would be useful to you.

If you have an event you would like to see listed, please send it to info@shakespearetwentyscore.org

25,000 Early English texts From 1473-1700 Released Online

More than 25,000 early English texts from 1473-1700 have been released online to members of the public as part of a collaborative initiative led by the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and the University of Michigan Library.

This corpus of electronic texts has been created and released by the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP), an international collaboration among universities, funders and ProQuest, an information company central to global research. Previously, the texts were only available to users at academic libraries involved in the partnership but the data was released into the public domain on 1 January.

For more information about this, please see: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/news/2015/jan-27.

To access the collection, please visit: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebogroup.

Shakespeare Documented – Now Online

Shakespeare Documented is the largest and most authoritative collection of primary-source materials documenting the life of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), bringing together all known manuscript and print references to Shakespeare, his works, and additional references to his family, in his lifetime and shortly thereafter. Nearly 500 references, found in roughly 400 print and manuscript documents, provide a rich portrait of Shakespeare as a professional playwright, actor, poet, business man, and family man who lived in both London and Stratford-upon-Avon. These documents trace Shakespeare’s path to becoming a household name, from the earliest reference to his father in Stratford-upon-Avon, a bustling market town in Warwickshire, in 1552, to the publication of his collected plays, now known as the “First Folio,” in 1623, to the earliest gossipy references to Shakespeare in the following decades.

On this site you will find images, descriptions, and transcriptions of:

  • 103 manuscripts that refer to William Shakespeare by name in his lifetime (spelled in many different ways, which was typical of the period), including four manuscripts signed by him, and one letter addressed to him
  • 89 printed books and manuscripts from Shakespeare’s lifetime that mention or quote his plays or poems, or that refer to him directly or indirectly as a writer
  • 34 Stationers’ Register entries for Shakespeare’s plays and poems, up to and including the First Folio (1623), five of which name him as author
  • 84 printed editions of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, up to and including the First Folio (1623), 62 of which include his name on the title-page or dedicatory leaf
  • More than 100 documents that refer to other members of Shakespeare’s family, including references to Shakespeare’s coat of arms

The Shakespeare Documented website can be found at: http://www.shakespearedocumented.org.

Adam Matthew Medieval and Early Modern Collections – Free Four-Week Trial

Adam Matthew publishes unique primary source collections from archives around the world The collections span the social sciences and humanities and cover a multitude of topics ranging from Medieval family life and Victorian medicine to 1960s pop culture and global politics.

Free, four-week trials are available on all Adam Matthew collections simply by completing the trial request form. A member of the Adam Matthew team will contact you with confirmation of your trial details on submission of the form.

  1. Select the collection you would like to trial from the select collections list.
  2. Complete your details in the form below, ensuring you have provided your email address.
  3. Click send.

These trials are open to teachers, faculty and librarians of universities, colleges, and academic institutions (private and public).

Stuart Successions Database – Now Online

The Stuart Successions database providing a searchable catalogue of the writing printed in response to moments of royal and protectoral succession over the long 17th century, is now available to browse at: http://stuarts.exeter.ac.uk/database.

The database is the outcome of the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions project undertaken in collaboration by the universities of Exeter and Oxford. Containing records for over 3000 examples of succession literature across several genres, including panegyric and elegy, sermon and pamphlet, address and proclamation, the database will help students of both literature and history to uncover new ways of understanding the relationship between literature, print, and politics during one of most tumultuous centuries in British history.

vHMML: virtual Hill Museum and Manuscript Library – Now Online

The Hill Museum and Manuscript Library has launched vHMML (virtual Hill Museum & Manuscript Library) http://www.vhmml.org, and it is an excellent new resource for the study of manuscripts in their collection, which will now be available to peruse online.

In addition, vHMML has many other resources: instruction in Latin and Syriac scripts in School (http://www.vhmml.org/school), Latin and Syriac annotated images in Folio (http://folio.as.uky.edu), answers to terminological questions in Lexicon (http://vhmml.org/lexicon), and bibliography in Reference (http://vhmml.org/reference) (exportable to Zotero, and with links to digital versions in archive.org).

DMMapp (Digitized Medieval Manuscripts App)

The DMMapp (Digitized Medieval Manuscripts App) links to more than 300 libraries in the world. Each one of these contains medieval manuscripts that can be browsed for free. The DMMapp is developed by the Sexy Codicology Team; it is part of the Digitized Medieval Manuscripts Maps (DMMmaps) project.

For more info, and to use the app. please visit, http://digitizedmedievalmanuscripts.org/app/

Free Online Courses on the History of the Book

A free online series of courses that may be of interest to ANZAMEMS members. Thanks to Julie Hotchin for sending me the link to the free online courses:

The courses are on The Book: Histories Across Time and Space, and are offered by Harvard University through edX. In particular courses on The Medieval Book of Hours: Art and Devotion in the Middle Ages, and Books in the Medieval Liturgy, both offered by Jeffrey Hamburger, sound of particular relevance to many medievalists in our community. The courses are self-paced and commence on 1 September.

For full details on the courses mentioned above (as well as a few other relevant courses on offer that also commence on Sept. 1), please visit the links below:

Books in the Medieval Liturgy: https://www.edx.org/course/books-medieval-liturgy-harvardx-hum1-9x

The Medieval Book of Hours: Art and Devotion in the Later Middle Ages: https://www.edx.org/course/medieval-book-hours-art-devotion-later-harvardx-hum1-8x

Making and Meaning in the Medieval Manuscript: https://www.edx.org/course/making-meaning-medieval-manuscript-harvardx-hum1-1x

The History of the Book in 17th and 18th Century Europe: https://www.edx.org/course/history-book-17th-18th-century-europe-harvardx-hum1-4x

Monasteries, Schools, and Notaries, Part 1: Reading the Late Medieval Marseille Archive: https://www.edx.org/course/monasteries-schools-notaries-part-2-harvardx-hum1-7x

Monasteries, Schools, and Notaries, Part 2: Introduction to the Transitional Gothic Script: https://www.edx.org/course/monasteries-schools-notaries-part-2-harvardx-hum1-7x

Print and Manuscript in Western Europe, Asia and the Middle East (1450-1650): https://www.edx.org/course/print-manuscript-western-europe-asia-harvardx-hum1-3x

Scrolls in the Age of the Book: https://www.edx.org/course/scrolls-age-book-harvardx-hum1-2x

The Gothic Ivories Project – Now Online

The Gothic Ivories Project was launched in October 2008 at the Courtauld Institute of Art. It consists of an online database of ivory sculptures made in Western Europe ca. 1200-ca. 1530, as well as neo-Gothic pieces.

This online resource allows wide-ranging searches on iconography, provenance, origin, post-medieval repairs and replacements, modern forgeries, and many other aspects. It is possible to view in one place images and detailed information on over 5,000 items scattered in over 400 collections around the world. The focus of the Project is on objects made in Europe dating from c. 1200-c. 1530 (excluding Embriachi work), and modern imitations. Please note that the mission of the Gothic Ivories Project is to compile published information and scholarly opinion on the objects, not to emit a judgement on them.

Over 400 institutions in 27 different countries are now on board. Among them are some key collections such as The State Hermitage Museum in Saint-Petersburg, the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden, the Museo e Tesoro del Duomo di Monza, but also many small and little known collections, such as that of Oscott College, near Birmingham, or of the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona.

Nearly all these collections are available online: the website now contains 5113 entries, illustrated with 14233 images.

This resource is fully accessible online to researchers, students, and the wider community, thus providing an invaluable tool for the study of these objects.

The Gothic Ivories Project website: http://www.gothicivories.courtauld.ac.uk.