Digital Manuscripts in the Classroom was developed by Erik Kwakkel, former Scaliger Professor at Leiden University, in collaboration with Leiden University Libraries (UBL). The website provides a means to integrate medieval manuscripts in the classroom through short introductory texts aimed at non-experts. Integrated questions prompt users to examine certain aspects of the manuscripts, which are presented in digital form.

All manuscripts presented here were selected from the library’s Special Collections by Erik Kwakkel with input from instructors at the University of Leiden’s Faculty of Humanities. The objects at the heart of Digital Manuscripts in the Classroom were digitised by Special Collections Services (UBL) with funding made available by Carel Stolker, Rector Magnificus of Leiden University.

Erik Kwakkel and Renée Schilling organised the manuscripts into educational routes, while accompanying texts (RS) and a series of questions (EK) were made to provide a pedagogical context for studying these manuscripts. The webpages Quill: Introduction and Quill: Glossary were previously published as Quill: Books before Print, a website created by Erik Kwakkel (texts) and Giulio Menna (photos), now offline. Further copy-editing of the website was undertaken by Jamie Wood (School of Information, University of British Columbia).

Ben Companjen (Centre for Digital Scholarship, UBL) developed the website using the Jekyll static site generator and the Minimal Mistakes theme, in collaboration with Erik Kwakkel, Renée Schilling, and André Bouwman, curator of western manuscripts (UBL). The digitised images are presented via IIIF from the Digital Collections repository, and shown in the Mirador image viewer.

April 2021