Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 160.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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        Date: 2019-07-31 20:16:52+00:00
        From: Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry 
        Subject: Announcing the Italian Paleography Website

Announcing Italian Paleography
The Newberry Library

(https://italian-paleography.library.utoronto.ca)

The Newberry Library's Center for Renaissance Studies proudly launches a
new digital resource devoted to Italian paleography, sponsored by the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Paleography, the study of the history of
handwriting and scripts in books, manuscripts, and other documents, is
essential for scholarly research in the humanities for the premodern
period.  Created and edited by Isabella Magni (Newberry Library), Lia
Markey (Newberry Library), and Maddalena Signorini (Università di
Roma-Tor Vergata) in collaboration with the University of Toronto
Libraries Information Technology Services and the Walter J. Ong S.J.
Center for Digital Humanities at St. Louis University, this new website
provides pedagogical tools for the study of Italian vernacular
handwriting from 1100 to 1700 using manuscripts in the Newberry
collections as well as other US institutions. The new paleography site
complements a resource devoted to French paleography launched in 2016,
also funded by the Mellon Foundation and designed in partnership between
the Newberry, Toronto, and St. Louis. Like the French site, the intended
audience of the Italian site is varied: scholars preparing to conduct
research in Italian archives; students studying Italian language,
history and culture; curators, librarians, and archivists who work with
manuscripts; calligraphers and graphic designers interested in
historical scripts; and anyone who would like to experiment with
transcribing early Italian documents.

The site features 102 digitized manuscripts representing 7 different
types of scripts and 3 difficulty levels. Each manuscript is paired with
a transcription and a scholarly entry written by a specialist in the
field. These background essays provide the historical, cultural, and at
times codicological context for the manuscripts. Using the Ong Center’s
transcription tool, T-PEN, users of the site can transcribe the
documents and save their transcriptions online.  The site includes a
handbook describing the various types of scripts and providing the
history of the vernacular in medieval and Renaissance Italy. The site
also comprises an appendix with significant manuscript calligraphy books
and maps from Italy in the Newberry collections to showcase the
library's rich holdings and to provide another context for studying
handwriting from the period. Finally, examples of abbreviations and
symbols, a glossary of paleography terms, links to dictionaries, and
bibliography and references provide essential resources for the study of
Italian paleography. Over the next year, the team plans to incorporate
teaching materials to make integration of the site into the classroom
seamless.

You can access the Italian Paleography website here:
https://italian-paleography.library.utoronto.ca

Follow us on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/italpaleography

The Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies
www.newberry.org



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Editor: Willard McCarty (King's College London, U.K.; Western Sydney University, Australia)
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