In three fringe sessions for the 2020 Leeds International Medieval Congress, instructors, manuscripts curators, postdocs, and students will voice their successes and struggles in blogging manuscripts, and discuss your own developing ideas. We will start each session with 15 minutes of reflections on how universities and libraries can expand their public reach through teaching palaeography, the history of the book, and digital humanities.
For each session, we have decided to post a challenge for all those registered. We’ll select the most intriguing response and discuss them during the last 15 minutes of each session. The submitters of the top three most creative contributions across the sessions will have the opportunity to meet with an Oxford manuscripts curator for a digital consultation with a manuscript of your choice (once staff are allowed back in the building). These sessions will also launch an open competition for blog entries on the Polonsky German manuscripts in September, thanks to sponsorship from Manuscripts from German-Speaking Lands – A Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project. Read on to find out more! These sessions will launch a summer blogging prize with Manuscripts from German-Speaking Lands – A Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project.
Blogging Manuscripts with Polonsky German
Monday, 6 July, 18:30–19:00
The Bodleian Library launches the #PolonskyGerman blogging challenge. Whether you are fresh to engaging audiences online with manuscripts, or an old hand looking to try new ideas, we invite you to submit a short, informal proposal for a hypothetical blog post around one or more of the digitized Polonsky German manuscripts. For examples of previous responses, see the Polonsky German blog.
This is the first of three interactive sessions that will give participants the opportunity to collaborate on presenting everyday manuscripts to the public.
Speakers: Tuija Ainonen, Andrew Dunning, Henrike Lähnemann, Matthew Holford (University of Oxford)
Register online with TORCH
Submit your Polonsky German blog proposal by 24:00 Saturday, 4th July
Teaching the Digital Codex
Wednesday, 8 July, 18:30–19:00
Since 2016, Teaching the Codex has brought together teachers to develop more engaging pedagogical approaches to palaeography and codicology, with both regular colloquia and a long-running blog. Mary Boyle shares the knowledge she gained in launching a successful manuscripts movement from scratch, with reflections from Leonor Zozaya-Montes on the process of writing for the project blog. Julia Walworth will present some of Merton’s digitised manuscripts as possible subjects for a blog post.
The challenge here would be to use digitised items for a ‘teachable feature’; for examples look at previous ‘teachable features’ blogs.
Speakers: Mary Boyle (University of Oxford), Julia Walworth (University of Oxford), Leonor Zozaya-Montes (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria)
Register online with TORCH
Submit your Teachable Feature blog proposal by 24:00 Tuesday 7 July
Blogging Manuscripts for the General Public
Thursday, 9 July, 18:30–19:00
Alison Hudson and Alison Ray distil their wide-ranging expertise from the British Library’s Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition; the Medieval England and France, 700–1200 project; and Canterbury Cathedral’s collaborative ‘Picture This’ series. Participants will challenge one another to engage audiences in 280 characters or less with images from a medieval bestiary, British Library Harley MS 4751, digitized in full as part of The Polonsky Foundation England and France, 700-1200 digitization project.
Speakers: Alison Hudson (University of Central Florida), Alison Ray (Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library)
Register online with TORCH
Submit your tweet or microblog 24:00 Wednesday 8 July
Dr Andrew Dunning (https://twitter.com/anjdunning) is the R.W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library.
For more medieval matters from Oxford, have a look at the website of the Oxford Medieval Studies TORCH Programme and the OMS blog
