The
Department collects manuscripts primarily for their texts:
data-sources offering researchers both answers and problems.
Secondly, we have tried to supply students of the history
of the book with an assortment of the physical characteristics
of normal medieval manuscripts, including a variety of hands.
We have not deliberately collected "high spots."
Few of our medieval manuscripts are highly ornamented; few
have original bindings; many are in workaday 15th-century
cursive. Most of them are the normal books which provided
both pleasure and information to the ordinary reader. The
Department's holdings of manuscripts written before 1000 AD
is very small: a dozen cuneiform tablets (dating from about
2,000 BC); an extraordinary Egyptian Amduat papyrus scroll,
the Ballard Papyrus (dating from about 1,000 BC); four tiny
fragments of papyrus (dating from the 3rd and 4th centuries
AD); and perhaps half-a-dozen undated leaves which may be
as early as the 9th century. For practical research purposes
our manuscript holdings begin in the early 11th century with
three Anglo-Saxon leaves, and increase in every century.
Between AD 1000 and 1500 we have (divided by form):
The Department also has manuscript material by later scholars covering the medieval period; later copies of medieval texts and documents; and a 19th-century scrapbook of initials cut from 14th- to 16th-century manuscripts.
The Department
contains basic and advanced works on palaeography, on dating manuscripts,
on reading abbreviations, on the ornament found in manuscripts,
on medieval deeds, etc. It also contains facsimiles of medieval
manuscripts (of an entire work, or of single pages) and catalogs
of the holdings of other libraries. Added to this are a few handbooks
to help with medieval history, places, etc., and a few dictionaries.
Basic reference books, histories of books and libraries, and reference
books concerning both printed and MS material are available in
the reference collection in the reading room.
| Department
of Special Collections, Kenneth Spencer Research Library The University of Kansas Lawrence, KS 66045-7616 Special Collections Librarian, Richard W. Clement, Phone: 785/864-4334 Fax: 785/864-5803 |
Copyright © 2008 by the University of Kansas