This is the Classroom, in which you can find resources to help you learn more about manuscripts at Penn and more generally. Listed below are self-paced modules to Study, videos to Watch, and a blog and a journal to Read.
This site introduces novices to looking at Islamic manuscripts. Read through the pages in order and, if you like, take the mini-quizzes as you go.
This tutorial provides the building blocks you will need to explore the Mapping Manuscript Migrations (MMM) dataset using the SPARQL query language. You can construct far more complex queries using SPARQL than the faceted search provided by the general MMM user interface. Although the SPARQL language can intimidate the uninitiated, it’s actually quite easy to use once you learn the basics of the syntax. The queries included in this tutorial can be customized by the user to suit any particular research interest. You should know a bit about the MMM project in general before embarking on the SPARQL tutorial: you can read more about it here.
This tutorial guides you through learning to read Caroline Minuscule Script through Digital Mappa. Begin your lesson at the Challenges document. Each challenge includes links to the references and images needed to complete the challenge. References such as alphabet and abbreviation notes as well as images and notes on the manuscripts used are available directly in the References folder.
This six-week noncredit course is designed to give graduate students from a variety of disciplines an introduction to handling, reading, studying, and interrogating manuscripts from medieval and Renaissance Europe, through both traditional and digital methods. Students are matched with manuscripts from the Penn collection relevant to their research interests. Class time is divided between lectures by SIMS staff and independent study, with paleography assignments and preparation for a final presentation also expected outside of class time. Details about the mode of the 2021 course (hands-on or online) and registration will be posted here in March.
This playlist on YouTube will give you a deeper look at a number of the manuscripts held in the Schoenberg Collection at the University of Pennsylvania.
This is an illustrated read-aloud of Marguerite Makes a Book by Bruce Robertson. Read by Dot Porter.
YouTube playlists containing the last five years of lectures delivered at the Schoenberg Symposium. This annual symposium, organized in partnership with the Free Library of Philadelphia, brings together scholars from around the world and across disciplines to present research related to the study of manuscript books and documents produced before the age of printing and to discuss the role of digital technologies in advancing manuscript research. Whether relying on traditional methods of scholarship or exploring the potential of new technologies, the research presented in each symposium highlights the value of the manuscript book or document in understanding our intellectual heritage.
YouTube playlist of lectures given by scholars hosted by the SIMS / Herbert D. Katz Center Distinguished Fellowship in Jewish Manuscript Studies. The fellowship, funded in part by the David Ruderman Distinguished Scholar fund, pairs a prominent scholar in any field of Jewish studies with a manuscript in one of our collections.
This site is inspired by the BiblioPhilly project and showcases discoveries made in those collections, one for each week of the year.
Manuscript Studies is a new journal that embraces the full complexity of global manuscript studies in the digital age. It has been conceived with four main goals in mind. First, to bridge the gaps between material and digital manuscript research; second, to break down the walls which often separate print and digital publication and serve as barriers between academics, professionals in the cultural heritage field, and citizen scholars; third, to serve as a forum for scholarship encompassing many pre-modern manuscripts cultures—not just those of Europe; and finally to showcase methods and techniques of analysis in manuscript studies that can be applied across different subject areas.