Medieval manuscripts are our shared inheritance, and today they are more
accessible than ever-thanks to digital copies online. Yet for all that
widespread digitization has fundamentally transformed how we connect
with the medieval past, we understand very little about what these
digital objects really are. We rarely consider how they are made or who
makes them. This case study-rich book demystifies digitization,
revealing what it's like to remake medieval books online and connecting
modern digital manuscripts to their much longer media history, from
print, to photography, to the rise of the internet.
Examining classic late-1990s projects like Digital Scriptorium 1.0
alongside late-2010s initiatives like Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis,
and world-famous projects created by the British Library, Corpus Christi
College Cambridge, Stanford University, and the Walters Art Museum
against in-house digitizations performed in lesser-studied libraries,
Whearty tells never-before-published narratives about globally important
digital manuscript archives. Drawing together medieval literature,
manuscript studies, digital humanities, and imaging sciences, Whearty
shines a spotlight on the hidden expert labor responsible for today's
revolutionary digital access to medieval culture. Ultimately, this book
argues that centering the modern labor and laborers at the heart of
digital cultural heritage fosters a more just and more rigorous future
for medieval, manuscript, and media studies.
