Developing Resources for Description of Manuscripts from Understudied Christian and Islamic Traditions

FAIN: PB-269956-20

St. John's University, Collegeville (Collegeville, MN 56321-2000)
Columba A. Stewart (Project Director: September 2019 to April 2025)

The creation and enhancement of descriptive metadata for over 53,000 digitized manuscripts from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, along with work to expand recognized cataloging authorities for personal names, titles, and geographic locations in order to build out the international scholarly infrastructure for research on the history and culture of the Christian and Islamic world from the medieval period to the modern era.

Cataloging digitized previously unknown, inaccessible, and endangered Christian and Islamic manuscripts from the Middle East, Africa, and Europe for online access in vHMML Reading Room, and the creation of vHMML Data, a new database of names (and, resources permitting, titles) related to these manuscript traditions that currently lack LC authorities. vHMML Data will be freely accessible online for use by other projects, and the names will be submitted to VIAF and Wikidata. These resources will help to bring these understudied traditions into scholarly discourse and public understanding.