This project grew out of my love of Medieval manuscripts and my desire to share them with the world. I have been very lucky to have the opportunity to handle Medieval books--it is an opportunity I wish could be available to more people. However, those books need special care, and frequent handling can damage them. That is one of the exciting possibilities that the internet provides--by the creation of digital facsimiles, it is now possible for people to be able to examine Medieval manuscripts without repeated handling of the book. Although looking at a computer screen will never replicate the true experience of holding a manuscript, it does give the user the opportunity to examine the book with an ease and magnification not possible with the real book.

Part of my reason for doing this project is so that the world can have access to the Artz Hours, and to give me a reason to do detailed research on Medieval manuscripts. However, Jonathan, my partner on the project, and I both have another reason for doing a project like this. We both love manuscripts and we are both excited about the possibilities that the internet provides for making manuscripts available to the world, and we feel that with his expertise in computers and my knowledge of history, we make and excellent digitization team. We are both very interested in doing this type of thing for a living. Doing the project has reinforced this ambition in both of us--we would consider a career of handling manuscripts and digitizing them a life well spent.

Here is the original Prospectus for the project.

About the People who were involved in this project.

Digital Imaging Procedure--How I created the images on this website, what I did right, and what I did wrong.

Here is my list of stuff I plan to read for my research.

Here are a bunch of links relating to my project.