Digitisation of the medieval Latin and French manuscripts from the collection ‘Manuscripta Hamiltoniana’ (Ms. Ham.) of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Achim Bonte
• Subject Area: Greek and Latin Philology ; Art History ; Medieval History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 575726146

The aim of the current project is the creation and up-to-date presentation of the images and metadata of 257 medieval Latin and French-language manuscripts from the Berlin collection „Manuscripta Hamiltoniana (Ms. Ham.) “, amounting to a total of about 70,500 images. The manuscript collection of Sir Alexander Douglas, 10th Duke of Hamilton (1767-1852), acquired in 1882, is one of the central collections of the SBB's Western manuscripts as a first-class collection of cimelia of equal importance in terms of content and art history. It is therefore of particular relevance for research in various disciplines at home and abroad. The medieval Latin- and French-language Hamilton manuscripts selected for the project have already been catalogued in up-to-date scholarly catalogues and can therefore be made accessible to scholarly research in the best possible combination of of high resolution images and extensive metadata. Image digitization will be carried out by the digitization center of the SBB. Each item will be subject to an individual evaluation in order to determine the appropriate way of reproduction (scanner vs. photo-technology – different opening angles etc.). As a result more than 63,500 images will be produced using photographic equipment on a so-called „Grazer Buchtisc “. After the digitization process is completed, all existing digital copies will be provided with differentiated content-related structural metadata and made available online. The realisation of the project as a whole as well as the particular sequence of work in the digitization center will be an issue of planning and management. Both the results of the image digitization as well as the data-capturing will undergo thorough quality control. The appropriate presentation as well as the long-term-reusability of the images and their metadata will be ensured by their integration into the SBB's presentation platform („Digitalisierte Sammlungen“). In this environment the project results will be presented in the public domain in accordance with the IIIF standard using persistent URLs. Within the project bibliographic and detailed structural metadata on the manuscripts will be captured within the IT-infrastructure of the SBB. In addition, these informations will also be available in the specific national manuscript portal and central registry for digitized manuscripts, the „Handschriftenportal“. By the end of the project, all relevant descriptions will be available there online in full text including references to the respective digitized objects.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)