Resources

Virginia Cole, Reference and Digital Services Librarian at Olin and Uris libraries, continually updates the Cornell Library Medieval Studies Subject Bibliography, a comprehensive bibliography and research guide to medieval studies resources. The page contains additional information on how to locate source material, articles, and manuscripts for research projects related to the middle ages.

Kroch Library, Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC)

Medieval books and manuscripts were among the Cornell Library’s earliest acquisitions. The University’s first president, Andrew Dickson White, and his librarian, George Lincoln Burr (a Cornell medievalist), personally selected many manuscripts during frequent buying trips to Europe. White believed that instruction in history depended heavily on the use of original sources. He bought manuscripts for their instructional value, and his collection contains illustrative examples of most periods and styles. The collection is an invaluable resource for medievalists at Cornell and elsewhere.

The Fiske Icelandic Collection

Housed in the Kroch Library, Rare and Manuscripts Collections, the Fiske Icelandic Collection is the largest repository of works on Iceland and on Nordic medieval studies in North America and one of the three largest collections in the world. The collection attracts medievalists from Cornell, as well as scholars from around the world. Received in 1905, the Fiske Islandic collection contains over 32,000 titles in a variety of European languages and in diverse media.

Microfilm and Electronic Resources

Cornell University Library has a wide range of medieval texts and resources available in microfilm form, including the entire British Library Cotton Collection.

Other examples of Cornell’s electronic holdings:

• Acta Sanctorum, which contains the complete texts of the sixty-eight printed volumes, from the two January volumes published in 1643 to the Propylaeum to December published in 1940. Cornell holds the complete print volumes at the Library Annex.

• Brepol's Library of Latin Texts, "offering texts from the beginnings of Latin literature down to the present day." It includes all volumes published in the Corpus Christianorum, both the Series Latina and the Continuatio Mediaeualis, the opera omnia of major authors, in addition to many more of the best editions and series available.

• Patrologia Latina Database, a complete electronic version of the first edition of Jacques-Paul Migne’s 217-volume Patrologia Latina (1844–1855, 1862–1865), also available in print in Olin 501, Graduate and Faculty Reading Room. It includes texts from 200 CE through the 13th century, as well as later ecclesiastical and humanistic scholarship.

From Manuscript to Print: The Evolution of the Medieval Book was first published in 2002 to supplement an exhibition in the Cornell University Library, 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.

This list offers a snapshot of long-standing internet medieval resources, first compiled in the early days of such "digital humanities" projects. It has not been maintained or updated, save to remove dead links. For an up-to-date, comprehensive guide and database, now see The Medieval Academy of America's Medieval Digital Resources.

• ARTFL Project (University of Chicago). The Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL) is a cooperative enterprise of Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française (ATILF) of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Division of the Humanities, the Division of the Social Sciences, and Electronic Text Services (ETS) of the University of Chicago.
• ARTFL Project Textes de Français Ancien The “Textes de Français Ancien” (TFA) database was established by the Laboratoire de Français Ancien (LFA, University of Ottawa), in collaboration with the ARTFL Project (University of Chicago). The original collection was composed of texts from the 12th and 13th centuries, digitized for the preparation of a lemmatized database of Old French (project in collaboration with the Institut National de la Langue Française). Middle French texts (14th and 15th centuries) have been added to this collection subsequently.
• The Medieval Feminist Index. A searchable index of feminist articles on medieval studies in a variety of geographic and subject areas. Not comprehensive, but a helpful supplement to research.
• The Digital Scriptorium. A consortium of North American institutions with collections of global premodern manuscripts, DS is dedicated to building an online national union catalog built on Linked Open Data technologies and practices for premodern manuscripts in US collections.
• Digital Index of Middle English Verse. The DIMEV provides transcriptions of the first two and last two lines of each witness of each Middle English verse text (i.e., for all witnesses for which this data has thus far been collected).
• The Internet Medieval Sourcebook. Hosted by the Fordham Center for Medieval Studies, begun in 1996, and still alive.
• Georgetown University Labyrinth. Now defunct, the Labyrinth was one of the first Medieval Studies websites to network resources and text repositories. Linked here is a history of its formation by its founders, Deborah Everhart and Martin Irvine.