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10 years e-codices
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In January 2005, a small research group at the University of Fribourg, in collaboration with the Abbey Library of St. Gall, began to publish digital copies of this world-famous collection’s medieval manuscripts on the internet. Over the past ten years, this project has continued to grow: today it consists of a team of 14 people (6.45 FTE) as well as several service providers. e-codices maintains two digitization centers, one in the German-speaking and another in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. It cooperates with all large public and ecclesiastical collections in Switzerland (> 20 manuscripts) as well as with several private libraries. Thanks to the great interest of domestic as well as foreign foundations and to the support of the Rectors’ Conference of Swiss Universities, e-codices was able to raise more than 6.7 million Swiss Francs in third party funds over the past ten years; about half of these funds came from foreign foundations.
We asked Prof. Dr. Christoph Flüeler, director and founder of e-codices, what changes the last several years have brought to the work of the digital manuscript library: "Ten years ago, there were not even a handful of digital manuscript libraries with scientific standards; today there are hundreds, and they have become very professional in their work. e-codices has contributed to this development and today faces completely different challenges than it did ten years ago. Common standards, interoperability, sustainability, systematic digitization of large holdings of manuscripts — before 2005 these were ideas that broke the mold and surpassed even the imagination. Today they present challenges that all libraries face. Digital manuscripts have regenerated and changed manuscript studies. Ten years ago, digital manuscript research imitated traditional scholarship; today it guides all manuscript research".
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St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 23, p. 7 – Folchart Psalter (Psalterium Gallicanum with Cantica)
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