Parker Library on the Web
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Parker Library on the Web is a multi-year undertaking of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, the Stanford University Libraries and the Cambridge University Library, to produce a high-resolution digital copy of every imageable page in the 538 manuscripts described in M. R. James Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College (Cambridge University Press, 1912), and to build an interactive web application in which the manuscript page images can be used by scholars and students in the context of editions, translations and secondary sources.
The 538 items numbered and catalogued by James exist as 546 physical volumes. A very small number of these are printed books, mistakenly catalogued as manuscripts in the 18th century, and these will be excluded. Also, there are a few manuscripts with paper pages which are badly damaged by moisture, or those with very fragile bindings, which at present cannot be successfully imaged in their totality. Exterior images will be made of the present bindings of each manuscript.
The project is of major importance for creating and preserving quality images of unique materials. These will be placed in managed digital archives as they are created. The project is expected to conclude in 2009, by which time the entire manuscript collection and associated secondary materials will be made available to the scholarly community.
