We kick off 2015 with the addition of 3 new Book Readers added to LUNA. The first two are both music manuscripts that came down to the DIU as part of the Readers Orders trolley. It is not often that we receive volumes to be digitised in their entirety this way, so it seemed a good opportunity. As a result we spared a bit of time to do the additional work to prepare them for the book reader software after the High Resolution images had been delivered to the customers.
The first is the delightful ‘Instrumentalischer Bettlermantl’ (shelfmark Dc.6.100), a seventeenth-century musical compendium, see http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/ytvdf9 . Full of wonderful drawings and written in a combination of Latin and German, the manuscript describes in excess of thirty instruments and how to play them. The author’s identity is unclear- describing himself as “A.S. a native of Habach and a member of a minor reformed order of Fransiscans”.
The second, we know as the ‘Thistlewaite Manuscript’ (shelfmark Dc.5.125), which is most likely to be the copied music of a professional Italian lutenist and still has its original leather binding. See http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/ei4y5e
And our final addition to the Book Reader collection? It is a Natural History book that was digitised many years ago, James Wilson’s ‘Illustrations of Zoology’ (shelfmark JY 953). Our volunteer, Kylie Hardie, did some sterling work preparing these for the book reader software. Packed with colourful, beautifully drawn plates, it really is worth a browse, see http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/8g04l1
Many thanks to Scott Renton for working his LUNA magic and getting these up online for us.
Susan Pettigrew, Photographer
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