Finding Manuscripts
Page Contents
Browse manuscripts
You do not need to be registered to browse the manuscript list, but you DO need to be registered to see any images that you find when looking through manuscript information. The libraries listed contain many manuscripts that are non-musical in content: only those related to Medieval music, and covered by the remit of the DIAMM project, are given in the manuscript lists.
The manuscripts listed on this website are organised by the libraries where they are kept. The Browse facility allows you to enter the library of your choice by selecting a country and city and then browsing the list of archives and their contents to find the manuscript you are looking for. 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. If you only know the ‘name’ of the manuscript you should use the Search facility to locate it by entering the name into the Source Description box (see ‘Search manuscripts’).
If you do not know (or do not see) the shelf mark of the manuscript in the library you reach, you should use the search page to select the library, and then narrow your search using any further information you have, such as date, provenance, or keywords that would appear in the source description.
Since the catalogues that form the basis of the DIAMM database were written some time ago, many libraries have changed their shelf marks, so that it may be difficult to locate a manuscript without the new shelf mark. Alternate or old shelf marks are listed in an ‘olim’ field in the source descriptions for each manuscript, but these are not yet searchable.
In the browse view manuscripts have images available to view are show with a tick preceding the shelf mark.
The database now lists ALL medieval manuscripts that we are currently aware of (please notify us of anything that we appear to have missed from our list), but only a relatively small proportion of these are accompanied by images. We are working to increase this number all the time. If you would like to donate images to the online collection please contact us: there is no charge for including images in the DIAMM resource.
Search manuscripts
Note: this search page does not search the website, it searches the database of 571 libraries (in 28 countries) containing 2648 manuscripts to find a particular manuscript source. You do not need to be registered to use the search engine, but you DO need to be registered to see images in found manuscripts.
There are 5 search criteria that you can select on the search page:
Archive City: this drop-down menu lists alphabetically all the cities in the DIAMM database.
Archive: this drop down will show nothing unless you have first selected a city. When you have done that the Archive list will show only the archives, private collections or other libraries in the DIAMM database for that city. You may know of other libraries in that city, but we only list those in which there are medieval music manuscripts containing polyphony.
Century: this field allows you to select the century in which a manuscript was written. You can use this field without preselecting any countries or cities.
Provenance: Most manuscripts in the database have known origins: this field does not refer to the current location of a manuscript, but the country where it was originally copied. You may be looking for French manuscripts, and they may now be kept in any country in the world. You do not need to select a country or library to use this field for searching across the manuscript collection.
Source Description: This is the only free-text entry box on the search page. It does not however allow Boolean searching. For example, if you enter the words ‘Eton Choirbook’ in this field the search results will find all source descriptions that contain the word ‘Eton’ AND all the source descriptions that contain the word ‘Choirbook’. However if you enter only the word ‘Eton’ (which is a more specific term than ‘Choirbook’) you will get only get results for the Eton Choirbook. You will get best search results using this field if you use it in addition to the other fields.
Under ‘Display Options’ you can choose how many results are displayed on each page, and there is a checkbox that will further limit your results: Return only sources that have images available on the web.
You can use the search page in two ways:
- 1. You can use the drop-down process to find the library or city in which you are interested. You do not need to select all the levels of drop-downs, but can narrow the search results if you are not sure of the location of your manuscript by using the Century, Provenance and Source Description fields.
- 2. You can search only on the single fields: Source Description, provenance or date, with or without qualification from other fields.
The search results will be returned as a list of all Manuscripts that match your search criteria.
When you click on the sample thumbnail or the manuscript shelf mark on the results page you will be taken to the full source description for that manuscript. If you click on the library name beside the sample thumbnail you will be taken to a list of manuscripts held in that library, with contact details for the library if that is available.
Over the next 18 months the search facility will be extended and enhanced to enable users to select more specific criteria, and also to free aspects which are currently dependent on other information (e.g. entering shelf marks in free-text search).