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

成千上万的欧洲前现代手稿保存至今。几个世纪以来，由于它们的所有权发生了变化，它们现在遍布世界各地。它们共同构成了一个伟大的文化和学术宝藏。与它们相关的数据来源有很多，而且新的来源在数字环境中不断增加。该项目将连接来自欧洲和北美的不同数据集，以提供这些手稿的历史和来源的国际视角。汇总的数据将使研究人员能够在从单个手稿到数千份手稿的范围内分析和可视化这些主题。我们将能够展示这些手稿如何穿越时间和空间到达它们现在的位置，在那里它们继续寻找新的观众。该项目对图书馆和其他收藏机构也将具有特别的相关性和价值。其分析结果将把他们的手稿收藏置于更广泛的收集模式和趋势的历史背景中，而其方法和数据体将为未来进一步的汇总和探索提供非常重要的资源。该项目采用的数据链接技术和可视化方法将更广泛地适用于各种文化遗产、藏品和手稿。

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.