History of the Book

• British Armorial Bindings, Bibliographical Society of London and the University of Toronto Library – a comprehensive catalogue of all the coats of arms, crests, and other heraldic devices that have been stamped by British owners on the outer covers of their books, together with the bibliographical sources of the stamps http://armorial.library.utoronto.ca/

• Early English Books Online (EEBO) – available with an LSU PAWS account

• The Evolution of the Medieval Book, Cornell University – the result of an exhibition, which traced the history of the medieval book—its appearance, content, audiences, and forms—from the 9th to the 15th centuries. Drawn from the holdings of Cornell Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, the exhibition presented a rich variety of medieval manuscripts and printed books, from early religious manuscripts and illuminated prayerbooks to the secular works of classical antiquity and the first books printed from metal type http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/medievalbook/default.htm

• Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, the Special Collection department of the University, holds facsimiles of medieval and renaissance books and manuscripts, some of them illustrated:  Bibles, books of hours, martyrologies,  sacred music, church law. Access is public, on site only, free of charge. http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/cc/sg/med-ren-mss-facs.pdf
  • Hill Library also owns an original manuscript Book of Hours (French, ca. 1450) and  reproductions of early printed books, including the Gutenberg Bible (1455), the Cologne Bible (1478), and the first printing of the King James Bible (1611). http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/cc/sg/religion.pdf
  • Policies and visitor guide at: http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/about/contact.html

   

• Humanities Text Initiative, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) — contains texts in electronic form from various eras and subject areas. Many texts are restricted to UM or subscribed users, but some medieval and early modern resources are available to anyone, including Benson’s Glossarial Database of Middle English, several Protestant translations of the Bible and the Rheims New Testament, a collection of Middle English texts, and Early Modern English Materials, including citations collected for the modal verbs and certain other English words for the Early Modern English Dictionary http://quod.lib.umich.edu/lib/colllist/

• Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes —Manuscripts in European and Middle Eastern languages. Free, electronic access. http://www.irht.cnrs.fr/en/ressources/les-ressources-electroniques

• Icelandic Manuscripts – Saganet — open-access. A cooperative project by The National and University Library of Iceland and Cornell University with the association of the ÁrniMagnússon Institute. Contains digital images of about 240,000 manuscript pages and 153,000 printed pages. The material consists of the entire range of Icelandic family sagas. It also includes a very large portion of Germanic/Nordic mythology (the Eddas), the history of Norwegian kings, contemporary sagas and tales from the European age of chivalry. A great number of manuscripts contain Icelandic ballads, poetry or epigrams. All manuscripts, printed editions, and translations of the Sagas as well as relevant critical studies published before 1900 are included http://saga.library.cornell.edu

• PhiloBiblon – a bio-bibliographical database of early texts produced in the Iberian Peninsula. Contains links to the Bibliografía Española de TextosAntiguos (BETA), Bibliografia de TextosAntigosGalegos e Portugueses (BITAGAP), and Bibliografia de Textos Catalans Antics (BITECA) http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/PhiloBiblon

• Turning the Pages, the British Library – images of several medieval and renaissance items including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Sfzora Hours; requires Adobe Shockware http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html