Mapping Manuscript Migrations: Digging into data for the history and provenance of pre-modern European manuscripts

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Hundreds of thousands of European pre-modern manuscripts have survived until the present day. As the result of changes in their ownership over the centuries, they are now spread all over the world. Collectively they constitute a great cultural and scholarly treasure. There are many sources of data relating to them, and new sources continue to proliferate in the digital environment. This project will link disparate datasets from Europe and North America to provide an international view of the history and provenance of these manuscripts. The aggregated data will enable researchers to analyse and visualize these topics at scales ranging from individual manuscripts to thousands of manuscripts. We will be able to show how these manuscripts have travelled across time and space to their current locations, where they continue to find new audiences.The project will also be of particular relevance and value to libraries and other collecting institutions. The results of its analyses will situate their manuscript collections in the broader historical context of patterns and trends in collecting, while its methodology and its body of data will provide a very important resource for further aggregation and exploration in the future. The data linkage techniques and visualization methodologies deployed by the project will be of wider applicability to all kinds of cultural heritage objects and collections as well as manuscripts.