2015-10-05

Manuscripts Go Missing

Manuscripts have been going missing at the Digita Vaticana, the digitized manuscripts portal at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome. It's all very mysterious.

Look at the index pages and there is no sign, for example, of this glorious gold-leaf codex, a Catenae of the Psalms, shelfmark Vat.gr.752.pt.1, more details at Pinakes. Here is an illumination from folio 22r of a horseman:

It was previously listed on the Vat.gr page, but it has now vanished. It is not listed on the rollcall of the Polonsky Foundation Digitizations Project either. But if you are very ingenious, you can still hand-compose the correct URL, http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.752.pt.1, and see the codex.

What this means is that there are now phantom manuscripts at Digita Vaticana that are neither indexed nor counted in the site total. Digita Vaticana had an index page as of October 4, 2015 that announced a total of 2,883 manuscripts were online. That was a rise of 139 from the previous release, but since the index had unaccountably delisted eight manuscripts on the same day, the true scale of new releases turned out to be 147 items.

I don't know how many phantoms are hiding in there, but I was able to trace six of the ghosts using comparison software:
Can you find any more?

.@DigitaVaticana Some of your manuscripts are missing incl. this gold horseman. Full story http://t.co/wpDyhajHAW pic.twitter.com/WdJMPdKSl8
— Jean-Baptiste Piggin(@JBPiggin) October 5, 2015

Digita Vaticana duly responded:

1 comment :

  1. Update: Vat.gr.752.pt.1 and pt.2 arrived back on the index page on November 30, 2015 after an eight-week absence.

    ReplyDelete