Converting all of our images in a variety of formats to JPEG2000 and migrating them to a robust scalable storage infrastructure. Standardizing the metadata for each collection to facilitate faceted browsing and searching across collections. Bringing together our discrete collections under a single user interface which supports fast user-friendly viewing of high resolution images. In addition, only a few collections offer a machine-readable interface, or any way to link their data with similar data in other Bodleian collections, or with collections at other institutions.ĭigital.Bodleian aims to solve these problems by: Some of our collections are linked at portal pages, but each collection remains, with a few exceptions, isolated and difficult to search. Like many academic libraries, though, our freely available digital collections have been placed online in project-driven websites, with content stored in discrete ‘silos’, each with their own metadata format, different user interfaces, and no common search interface enabling users to discover content or navigate across collections. The result is over 650,000 freely available digital objects and almost another 1 million images awaiting release. In an effort to make portions of our collections open to a wide variety of users from around the world for learning, teaching and research, the Bodleian Libraries have been digitizing library content for nearly twenty years. Each year the Libraries serve more than 65,000 readers, over 40% of them from beyond the University, while its critically-acclaimed exhibitions attract almost 100,000 visitors annually. The Bodleian Libraries’ collections are extraordinary and significant-both from a scholarly point of view and as material that has an historic and aesthetic richness that holds value for non-academic users. The images and descriptions may be accessed directly through CORSAIR, or by visiting Images from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts. Users may page through every illustrated leaf within a manuscript, or search for individual images by place or date of creation, artist’s name, illustration type, and subject. 
For example, with a single search a scholar interested in Dickens can find records for manuscripts and letters in the author’s hand, early printed editions of his novels, original illustrations, photographs, and personal possessions such as Dickens’ ink pot and cigar case.ĬORSAIR also serves as the gateway to one of the largest repositories of medieval images on the Internet, providing access to more than 57,000 digitized images from the Morgan’s collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Specialized indexes enable researchers to find all of the Morgan’s holdings associated with a given name, date, or place.
Many records include summaries of the content of individual letters, lengthy notes about provenance, and detailed descriptions of bindings. The depth of detail is unusual for an online catalog.
Records continue to be added for the balance of the collection as well as for new acquisitions. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed: here is a small selection of our favourites.Named after Pierpont Morgan’s yacht, CORSAIR is a single database providing unified access to over 250,000 records for medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, rare and reference books, literary and historical manuscripts, music scores, ancient seals and tablets, drawings, prints, and other art objects. We received some fantastic suggestions for our latest caption competition. We look forward to receiving your contributions – the best suggestions will be published on our Twitter account ( in the next few days. Over to you!įor inspiration (if you need any), the original images are found in an English Apocalypse manuscript, dating from the 1st quarter of the 14th century (British Library Royal MS 2 D XIII, ff. It's caption time again! And today (you lucky people) we're giving you not one but two - yes, TWO - chances to exercise your brains/show off to your friends.
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