While the Book of Kells is Trinity’s best-known medieval manuscript, the Library of Trinity College Dublin is also home to 600 other precious medieval manuscripts dating from the fifth to the 16th centuries with origins across western Europe. Sixty of these manuscripts have been conserved and digitized, rendered as 16,000 high-quality images, and are now available freely to the public as part of the Library’s Manuscripts for Medieval Studies Project, which was celebrated at a launch event in the Long Room at the Library of Trinity College Dublin on November 30, 2023. Thus began a two-day conference hosted by Trinity, “The Many Lives of Medieval Manuscripts,” which showcased research outputs arising from the digitization of these manuscripts, including research papers on the conservation of vellum manuscripts and using AI to transcribe medieval manuscripts.
The material of the Medieval Studies Project illuminates the social, creative, medicinal, and culinary culture of medieval Europe, forming part of the Virtual Trinity Library program, a digitization initiative of the Library of Trinity College Dublin’s most valued collections. Support for the project was provided by philanthropic grants from Carnegie Corporation of New York, a continuation of the foundation’s long-running funding of digitization efforts at major research and educational institutions, including the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, Carnegie Hall, the New York Public Library, New York University, the Richelieu Library, and Gladstone’s Library.
At the launch event, Dame Louise Richardson, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, said, “The founder of Carnegie Corporation of New York, Andrew Carnegie, often said that books contain the treasures of the world. Over 140 years ago, he began funding libraries in the belief that providing a library exceeds anything else a community can do to help its people.”
Commenting on the significance of the project, Trinity College librarian and college archivist Helen Shenton said, “For the first time in their existence, these exquisite manuscripts can now be viewed digitally by anyone. As part of the Virtual Trinity Library’s Manuscripts for Medieval Studies Project, they are part of teaching and research at Trinity College Dublin and foster international collaboration with other universities and libraries.”
Andrew Carnegie believed deeply in libraries as a means of making information and education freely available and accessible to anyone. “Today our foundation honors that legacy by supporting Trinity College Dublin’s role in preserving knowledge for future generations,” said Richardson. “Through the careful restoration and digitization of medieval manuscripts, these cultural artifacts will be accessible to both the curious and the scholarly for the benefit of us all.”
As the Bodleian Library’s Richard Ovenden has pointed out, “Preservation of knowledge is fundamentally not about the past but the future.”
