NEH Supports Academy Digital Editions Project

The National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs, has awarded the Academy $120,000 to support “Retrospective Digital Editions of Print Editions Published by The Medieval Academy of America, 1925–2001.” The two-year grant will make it possible for the Academy to digitize thirty-eight editions published by Medieval Academy Books from the Academy’s foundation to 2001. In addition to editions of Medieval Latin, the project will digitize these major vernaculars: Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, and Welsh. Poetry and music are found in addition to prose works. By treating literary, philosophical, scientific, commercial, documentary, political, and religious texts, the project will provide multiple points of entry to the Middle Ages.

Half of the thirty-eight editions are out of print, and those titles in print and published before 1982 were printed on acidic paper and are therefore beginning to disintegrate. Digitization will obviate the problem of acidic paper and offer an extra dimension of accesssibility, for these texts will be findable through electronic search engines. Searchability will extend use of the material beyond the self-defined circle of medievalists, thus bringing the Academy’s commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship to a new level. The books will be accessible free of charge on the Academy’s website.

Jacqueline Brown and Paul E. Szarmach are project Co-directors, while Patrick W. Conner is Senior Consultant. The Advisory Board consists of: Constance B. Bouchard, Siân Echard, David F. Johnson, Christopher Kleinhenz, Deborah McGrady, Patrick O’Neill, and Eckehard Simon. Grapevine Publishing (Madison, Wisc.) will provide technical services.

Science and Medicine Databases

Voigts-Kurtz Search Program for eTK and eVK2 at the University of Missouri - Kansas City

eTK - a digital resource based on Lynn Thorndike and Pearl Kibre, A Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy, 1963) and supplements.

eVK2 - an expanded and revised version of Linda Ehrsam Voigts and Patricia Deery Kurtz, Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference. CD (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).