Welcome to Digital Scriptorium!

Digital Scriptorium (DS) is a growing consortium of North American institutions with collections of global premodern manuscripts. DS is dedicated to building an online national union catalog for manuscripts in US collections. 

The beta version of the new DS Catalog was launched in July 2023. We are in the process of gathering the most up-to-date data from member institutions, which will be enriched and transformed as Linked Open Data.

The addition of current DS Member Institution data has begun and will continue through 2024. Recent data additions to the DS Catalog include contributions from:

• Ohio State University
• University of California, Berkeley
• Cornell University
• Vassar College
• New York Academy of Medicine
• University of California, Riverside
• University of Vermont
• Harry Ransom Center (in-situ fragments)
• Rutgers (Hebrew manuscripts)
• Providence Public Library (Arabic manuscripts)

This now brings the DS Catalog to over 12,000 records representing 35 different institutions/collections. We are also continuing to process records from other member institutions, including items from Wellesley College, and additional Arabic and Islamic manuscripts held at Princeton University.

Institutions are represented in the DS Catalog depending upon contribution of their data to DS. If records for a member institution are not yet available, please check back or follow our progress by subscribing to the DS newsletter.

Use the DS Catalog to

• Access and research manuscript data across member institutions
• Bookmark results and save searches
• Link to external authorities for richer context and deeper data exploration
• Query the DS Wikibase SPARQL Endpoint for advanced search and discovery within the DS Catalog and beyond

Questions about the new DS Catalog?

Learn more about the project here.

Is your institution interested in joining DS?

Learn more about membership here.

Member benefits include:

• Transformation of your structured manuscript metadata into Linked Open Data
• Representation of your manuscript collections in Wikidata, the world’s largest and freely accessible Knowledge Graph (coming soon)
• Participation in a national community of scholarship and research supporting the study of our shared intellectual heritage through collaboration across institutional and regional boundaries

Stay up to date on DS community activities and opportunities.

Sign up here for the DS newsletter.

Become a Friend of Digital Scriptorium

Friends contribute financially to support our mission to provide cross-institutional digital access to their collections of pre-modern manuscripts and enhance access and appreciation of historically significant but often understudied manuscript materials. Your tax-deductible contribution today supports tomorrow’s sustainability of DS’s national union catalog of pre- and early modern manuscripts and ensures open access to member institutions’ data by users around the world. Click here to learn more about becoming a Friend of DS!