Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 472, Ḥeshbon mahalkhot ha-kokhavim, by Abraham bar Hiyya Savasorda. This manuscript was written in Spain during the 15th century, in Hebrew, and it is a copy of the second part of a 12th-century two-part treatise. This second part, on astronomy, includes computations for solar and lunar eclipses between 1135 and 1136.

See the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata at OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 267, De ludo scacchorum seu de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium … [etc.]. This manuscript was written in Italy in 1409, in Latin, with a few poems in Italian. It is a compilation, mostly in Latin, of religious, literary, historical, and natural-historical works, including classical and contemporary selections, as well as letters by humanist writers Francesco Petrarca and Donatus Albanzani. Over a quarter of the manuscript is devoted to the De ludo scachorum of Jacobus de Cessolis, a collection of sermons about the proper relationships between a king and various classes of subjects, compared to the rules of chess.

You can see the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata at OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 37, Euclid’s Elements (in Arabic). This manuscript was written in Egypt, Iraq, or Syria, A.H. 502-504 (1108-1111), and it is Epitome or abridgement in Arabic of Euclid’s Elements, written on paper.

You can see the full online facsimile of this work at Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata at OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 238, Assise of all man[n]er of breade. This manuscript, written in Winchester in the 16th century, is a table of prescribed weights for varieties of loaves for different prices of wheat. It bears the heading The statute of wynchestre.

You can see the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata  at OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 172, Tabulae directionum et profectionum, by Joannes Regiomontanus. This manuscript was written in Austria or Hungary, circa 1476, in Latin, and it includes astronomical tables of declinations and ascensions and a table of sines, copied not long after their completion by Regiomontanus in 1467.

You can see the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images metadata from OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 231, Statutum habelle communum. Written in Latin in Barga, Italy after 1346, this manuscript of 49 chapters includes regulations concerning the amount of tax (gabella or gabelle) and the conditions under which duty must be paid on internal and external trade in cloth of various kinds and from various sources.

You can see the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images metadata from OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 97, Eis ta harmonika Ptolemaiou hypomnēma, byPorphyry . This manuscript was written in Spain or Italy, between 1560 and 1580, in Greek, and it contains Porphyry’s commentary on about half of Ptolemy’s treatise Harmonics, focusing on harmonics and acoustics.

You can see the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata from OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.