Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 184, Liber ethimologiarum, by Isidore of Seville.  This manuscript was written in France or Catalonia, between 1265 and 1299, in Latin, and it is an encyclopedia with emphasis on word origins, arranged by subject. The manuscript follows the standard division into 20 books, except that Book 3, on mathematics, music, and astronomy, is divided into Books 3 and 4, giving the manuscript a total of 21 books. Additional astronomical material, probably from Bede’s De temporum ratione, appears at the end of Book 21.

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.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS418, Passio sancti Blasii. This manuscript was written in Italy in the 13th century, in Latin, and it is an account of the martyrdom of Saint Blaise, bishop of Sebaste in Armenia, followed by readings and chants for a Mass of Saint Blaise. Additional texts, probably in different hands, at the end of the manuscript are mostly for baptisms, but also include one group of prayers for vestments and two rough sketches of Guidonian hands.

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.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 293, Kitāb al-Bayān wa al-tidhkār fī sanʻat ʻamal al-ghubār, written by Abū Bakr al-Ḥaṣṣār. This manuscript was written in Baghdad in A.H. 590 (1194), in Arabic, and it is a near-contemporary copy of the first volume of the Book of demonstration and recollection in the art of dust-board reckoning, a 12th-century treatise on arithmetic and algebra.

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.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 295, Kitāb-i Advār, written by Urmawī, ʻAbd al-Muʼmin ibn Yūsuf. This manuscript was written in Iran in A.H. 815 (1412) and it is a Persian translation of al-Urmawī’s treatise on the theory of music, including division of frets, ratio of intervals, consonance and dissonance, cycles, rhythmic and melodic modes, and the 5-string oud or lute.

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.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 296, Īḍāḥ al-maqāṣid li-farāʼiḍ al-fawāʼid. This manuscript was written in Iran in A.H. 720 (1320), in Arabic, by Kāshī, ʻImād al-Dīn Yaḥyá ibn Aḥmad and it is a mathematical treatise with frequent marginal notes by multiple hands.

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.