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Source Description tab

You do not need to be logged in to access source descriptions but you will need to be logged in to see manuscript images.

The first line of the Source Description is the Archive which holds the manuscript. To access details about the library you should click on the library name. This will take you to a list of manuscripts in that library with their source descriptions, dates and provenance.

(Clicking on a shelf mark in this second view will take you to the main source description page for that manuscript. At the top of the library details list you will find contact details for the library if that is included in our data. We would be grateful to receive any additional information that users can supply to supplement our own data.)

Each manuscript is designated by its call number or shelf mark, not by any common or colloquial name by which it may also be known. The source description for any manuscript can be reached:

In this view there are two ‘tabs’ in the main part of the page: the first tab, ‘Source Description’ shows all the textual material available to us that describes the manuscript. The ‘Olim’ paragraph is quite important as this will list names by which the manuscript may be known and any other shelf mark that may have been used to designate the manuscript either in its current library, or a previous one.

The main description field contains text scanned from RISM or the Census Catalogues and read by OCR software. The results have been proof-read and we hope will no longer contain any errors. (Please notify us if you find anything that needs correcting.) The content and extent of the description depends on the information provided in the printed catalogues. The originating catalogue will be identified preceding each description. In some cases there are descriptions supplied by more than one source catalogue. In this case both descriptions are reproduced. All descriptions are reproduced as they appeared in the original book, without any edits, even where we now know that the information may be inaccurate. If there are any corrections to the original information this is recorded in the ‘Notes’ paragraph at the foot of the ‘Source Description’ tab. To see an image of the original catalogue pages, go to the paragraph near the foot of this tab entitle ‘Catalogue Image’ (see notes below for details).

The Date paragraph gives the most accurate date known for the origins of the manuscript. This does not attempt to identify dates of composition for individual works in the manuscript, only a date of copying.

The Bibliography originally contained the abbreviated bibliographies compiled by the catalogues. These are difficult to use unless you are familiar with the bibliographical keys employed by the authors. The bibliographies are presented as much as possible in their full form, but where work on linking the abbreviations to their full forms is incomplete the abbreviated list has been retained. These will be replaced by full bibliographies as soon as is possible.

Further information that is also found in the description paragraph is also listed in the following paragraphs which are self-explanatory: Page measurements, Provenance, Notation and Surface.

In all cases if there is no content under the subject headings they will not appear.

The paragraph entitled Catalogue Image will contain one or more links entitled ‘RISM’ or ‘CCM’. These links will open an image viewer showing the original catalogue page as it was scanned. Next and Previous buttons will allow you to page back and forth through the books without limitation. Since some sources appear in more than one catalogue, and some may have entries in more than one volume of either catalogue, there may be more than one link in this paragraph. (You do not need to be logged in to have access to these images).

Image List tab

The second tab will read ‘Image list’ if there are images of the manuscript available online. (If there are no images linked to the manuscript it will read ‘(No images available)’ and will not be active if you click on it.) Under this tab you will find a thumbnail list of images with their folio numbers. Although these are very small they are sufficient to give you an idea of what can be seen on the full-size image. If you are not logged in these images are as far as you can go in this part of the website.

Once you are logged in, each thumbnail becomes an active link to a copy of the full-size image which appears in a customized image-viewer. For details of viewing images see the Help page describing the Image Viewer.