The news for this exciting event is from the news from the Smathers Libraries. This is certain to be an exciting event!
Treasures of the Parker Library
Posted By Barbara Hood
A talk by Melvin Jefferson (Cambridge, UK)
Thursday, April 18, 2013, 6-7 pm
Smathers Library (East), Room 1A
The Parker Library houses one of the most valuable Anglo-Saxon manuscript collections in the world, including the earliest copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (from c.850) and key Middle English texts such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. The Library’s most famous manuscript, the Latin St. Augustine Gospels, one of the earliest bound books in existence, is still used in the enthronement ceremony of the Archbishops of Canterbury.
The unique treasures of the Parker Library were recently made available for research as a licensed interactive web-based workspace. The “Parker Library on the Web” database was the product of a collaborative digitization project between Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University Library and Stanford University Libraries, funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
Melvin Jefferson served as the Head of the Cambridge Colleges’ Conservation Consortium based at the Parker Library for over 10 years before his retirement at the end of 2011. He conserved many precious books and manuscripts belonging to the Parker Library and eleven member colleges, worked as a consultant for other institutions and individuals, bound presentation books for European royalty, and played a key role in the Parker Library on the Web digitization project.
Jefferson will talk about the history of the Parker Library and provide an overview of its holdings. He will discuss the process, challenges and results of the Parker Library on the Web digitization project, providing illustrative examples from his unique collection of conservation project photographs.
This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments served.
For more information, contact Rebecca Jefferson: rjefferson@ufl.edu
Sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, the Department of English and the George A. Smathers Libraries