e-codices Newsletter

Issue n^o 38 - 25 June 2019

In this issue:

1. New manuscripts on e-codices
2. Facet “Decoration”
3. e-codices - One Million Users

The e-codices newsletter provides information about the latest updates, highlights, and activities of our project. We are delighted to count you among our readers!

The e-codices team

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1. New manuscripts on e-codices

With the most recent update on June 13, 2019, we published 49 new digital manuscripts and 60 manuscript descriptions, bringing the virtual collection to a total of 2,263 manuscripts from 92 collections. This is the first update of the follow-up project “e-codices 2017-2020 (part 2)”, which has just been initiated. For this sub-project, we are cooperating with five project partners, each of whom is putting a sizable number of manuscripts online:

• Burgerbibliothek Bern: two manuscripts and two fragments, among them a fragment containing an as-yet unknown text from the circle of John Scotus Eriugena
• Bibliothèque de Genève: five manuscripts, among them an evangeliary from the Cathedral of Geneva
• Abbey Library of Saint Gall: ten manuscripts, among them several prayer books
• Fondation Martin Bodmer: one fragment and one manuscript containing medical texts
• University Library Basel: three manuscripts and twelve fragments from Fulda

Thirteen more manuscripts come from smaller collections such as the parish archives of Faido (Canton of Ticino) or the library of St. Mary of the Angels, an Abbey of Capuchin nuns in Wattwil (Canton of St. Gallen).

2. Facet “Decoration”

In contrast to a full-text search, facets offer prefigured filters for refining a search by making apparent different aspects of the overall collection for the user and thus inviting the user on a voyage of discovery.

Our newest facet is also one of our most ambitious; just determining the relevant categories and subcategories required long discussions with numerous specialists.

However, it should be borne in mind that categories always pertain to entire documents, not to certain pages or excerpts of pages. That would be a further development and will be a new challenge for us to tackle.

An example of advanced search using decoration facets:
List of manuscripts from the Burgerbibliothek in Bern having “fully painted” decoration technique containing “Bern”.

3. e-codices - One Million Users

Each week thousands of users visit e-codices. Since June 2011 we have been tracking the number of users using Google Analytics, and according to this service, on Saturday, June 9, e-codices saw its 1,000,000th user. As users are identified by a client ID, this does not necessarily mean that one million distinct people have visited e-codices; nevertheless, with over a quarter of a million sessions per year, we can safely assume that our audience is quite large. e-codices thus demonstrates that in the digital age manuscripts have become a public good and that they appeal to a large audience.

If e-codices wants to reach its ambitious goal of making all medieval and a selection of modern manuscripts of Switzerland accessible via the internet, then we must attract the interest of the public at large. Our analytics show that we are on the right track!