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.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 232, Trattato delle proportioni et proportionalità by Benedetto Varchi. This manuscript was written in Italian in Florence, Italy, after 1539. It is a treatise by Benedetto Varchi on proportion as the basis for rithmomachia, a mathematical game played on a chessboard with pieces that each have a shape and a number; a dialogue written by Carlo di Ruberto Strozzi, in which Cosimo Rucellai, who introduced the game to Benedetto Varchi, teaches the rules to Strozzi and Jacopo di Piero Vettori.

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 242, Basis grammatice, by Guillaume Tardif. This manuscript was written in Paris in 1470 and it is a summary of Latin grammar arranged in 8 sections for 8 parts of speech, followed by conjugation tables for the 4 conjugations and a commentary on the summary.

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 235, Kitāb al-Adwār, by ʻAbd al-Muʼmin ibn Yūsuf Urmawī. This manuscript was written in the Ottoman empire during the 16th century, in Arabic, and it is a 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, with an anonymous commentary.

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 484, Questions on Aristotle’s Physics. This manuscript was written in Ingolstadt, circa 1480, in Latin, and it is a commentary on Aristotle’s Physics in the form of questions and answers following the content of the 8 books of the Physics.

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.

Nicholas Herman, Curator of Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 392, Taḥrīr al-majisti, by Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad (1201-1274). This manuscript was written around A.H. 813 (1411), in Arabic, and it is a 13th-century recension of Ptolemy’s Almagest with the early 14th-century commentary of the Iranian scholar and astronomer Niẓām al-Dīn al-Nīsābūrī.

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 404, Jawāmīʻ al-ʻulam, by Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʻUmar. This manuscript was written in Iran, between 1200 and 1225, in Persian, and it is a summary of the branches of knowledge, including the Koran, hadith, and history of Islam; grammar, rhetoric, and logic; medicine, anatomy, and pharmacology; gems and talismans; agriculture and veterinary science; geometry, geodesy, weight, arithmetic, and algebra; music; astronomy, astrology, and magic; theology, ethics, and political science.

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 188, Ynstruction of the ephimeredes. This manuscript was written in England ca. 1540 and it includes instructions in 22 chapters for the use of ephemerides, astronomical tables giving the positions of planets, the sun, and the moon. It also includes tables for the latitude of the moon, hourly motion of planets, duration of lunar eclipses, and lunar motion.

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.