INVENTORYING PRE-MODERN TEXTS IN VICTORIAN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

INVENTORYING PRE-MODERN TEXTS IN VICTORIAN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies Monash University

Scattered throughout Victoria are hundreds of manuscripts, fragments, and other documents from different cultures around the globe. These invaluable sources, for both academic research and cultural enrichment, are not centrally listed or described, and in some cases, there is little or no information available about them.

We wish to reach out to diverse communities, organisations and individuals who may be in possession of liturgical, literary, personal, or other handwritten material in Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin – preferably from before 1600. The following are just some examples: literary (stories, poems, works of history or philosophy), religious (prayers, liturgical texts), administrative (accounts, letters, diplomas, certificates), educational (grammar books).

We are interested in both whole manuscripts and individual leaves, written on paper, parchment, or papyrus.

We aim to bring together existing information about the items held in different places into a single database, and to add information about items that have not yet been described. This will be the basis for a future public resource.

If you wish to help us, by sharing information about pre-modern texts in private or public collections, please contact: sophismanuscripts@monash.edu

For more information about this project see the website.