Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 359, Liber canonis, by Avicenna. This manuscript includes sections from Books 1 and 2 of Avicenna’s 11th-century comprehensive medical work, as translated into Latin in the 12th century by Gherardo da Cremona. Book 1 addresses medicine generally; the section in the manuscript is from the first treatise and concerns the four elements. Book 2 is devoted to materia medica.

You can see the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand. and you can download all its images and metadata at OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video and an eBook version of the manuscript (epub format) 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 286, Tadhkirah uṣūl handasah al-ḥisāb li-Uqlīdis. This manuscript was written by Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Ṭūsī in Persia around A.H. 890 (1485), in Arabic, and it is a commentary on Euclid’s Elements, with numerous diagrams in and marginal annotations around the text and additional commentary on leaves following the text.

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 and an eBook version of the manuscript (epub format) 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 280,Decretales Gregorii IX. This manuscript was written in France between 1250 and 1299 in Latin for the Catholic Church. and it is an abbreviated version of the decretals compiled by Raymond of Peñafort in the 1230s by order of Pope Gregory IX.

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 and an eBook version of the manuscript (epub format) from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.

“Is This Your Book? What Digitization Does to Manuscripts and What We Can Do Think About It.” In a Rare Book School presentation at the Penn Libraries Dot Porter discusses how digitizing a manuscript changes our conceptualization of the manuscript. She also explores the terminology we currently employ in describing the digital version of a manuscript.

June 2018. University of Pennsylvania Libraries Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 57, Astronomical anthology. This manuscript was written in Catalonia, ca. 1361, in Hebrew, and it is a collection of astronomical texts, including a copy of a treatise on the calendar originally compiled for Pedro IV, King of Aragon, with an almanac of oppositions and conjunctions of the sun and moon and predictions of lunar and solar eclipses; four short works by the 12th-century scientist Abraham Ibn Ezra on an introduction to astrology, choosing the most auspicious moment for a given activity, the zodiac, and astrology concerning humankind collectively; and a Hebrew translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest, with numerous tables, diagrams, and illustrations

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.