The decipherment, description and online accessibility of 16,500 medieval Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic Genizah manuscripts
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Grant Holder:
Dr Ben Outhwaite
The project deciphers, describes, and digitises the medieval manuscripts from the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection at Cambridge University Library. The project describes and digitises around 16,500 items, creates bibliographic information, publishes catalogues, and provides access to descriptions, bibliographic information, and images online. The project gives scholars of religion, language, literature, culture, and history greater opportunity to study material from the collection. The collection contains material of interest to scholars from many fields, and the Genizah Unit has produced catalogues of items which have given scholars the ability to find manuscripts of interest.
HTML is generated from text files in Genizah Unit markup, and JPEG images are created from TIFF files.
| Project start date: 2006-01 | Project end date: 2009-02 |
Subject domains:
Era(s):
Country/region(s):
| Methods used | Category |
|---|---|
| 2d Scanning and photography | Data capture |
| Resource sharing | Communication and collaboration |
| Collating | Data analysis |
| Content analysis | Data analysis |
| Content-based image retrieval | Data analysis |
| Documentation | Strategy and project management |
| Risk management | Strategy and project management |
| Searching and querying | Data analysis |
| Server scripting | Data publishing and dissemination |
| Security planning | Strategy and project management |
| linguistics | Discipline |
| text | Content types |
| history | Discipline |
Funding sources:
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Content types created:
Still Image/Graphics, Text
Software tools used:
Perl
Source material used:
The source of the digital resource is the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection, which is held in Cambridge University Library. The T-S Collection consists of 193,000 fragements, principally in Hebrew, Judaeo-Arabic, Arabic and Aramaic. The text in the digital resources contains descriptions of the manuscripts and bibliographical information related to the manuscripts. The images in the resource are images of the manuscripts.
Digital resource created:
The digital resource provides a search of the descriptions of the manuscripts, and of the bibliographical information relating to the manuscripts. Searching using the resource produces listings of the relevant records. Where images of manuscripts are available, magnified viewing of the images of the manuscripts is provided. The purpose of the resource is to enable scholars to find and view images of interest.
Access to digital resource:
Open Access
Data Formats created:
Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), TXT data
Metadata standards employed:
Other
Publications:
Outhwaite, Ben, and Niessen, Friedrich, ‘A newly discovered autograph fragment of Maimonides’ “Guide for the Perplexed” from the Cairo Genizah’, Journal of Jewish Studies 57.2 (Autumn 2006), 287–297;
Jefferson, Rebecca, ‘Genizah Marriage Contracts: Contrasting Biblical Law and Halakhah with Mediaeval Practice’, in Deborah W. Rooke (ed.), A Question of Sex: Gender and Difference in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond (Sheffield, 2007), 162-73;
Niessen, Friedrich; Chipman, Leigh; Lev, Efraim, ‘A Hospital Handbook for the Community: Evidence for the Extensive Use of Ibn Abī’l-Bayān’s al-Dustūr al-bīmāristānī by the Jewish Practitioners of Medieval Cairo’, Journal of Semitic Studies 53 (2008), 103–18;
Jefferson, Rebecca and Vince-Dewerse, Ngaio, ‘When curator and conservator meet: some issues arising from the preservation and conservation of the Jacques Mosseri Genizah Collection at Cambridge University Library, Journal of the Society of Archivists 29/1 (2008), 41–56;
Jefferson, Rebecca, ‘A Genizah secret: the Count d’Hulst and the letters revealing the race to recover the lost leaves of the original Ecclesiasticus’; Journal of the History of Collections 21/1 (May 2009), 125–42;
Outhwaite, Ben, ‘Byzantium and Byzantines in the Cairo Genizah: new and old sources’ in Nicholas de Lange, Julia Krivoruchko and Cameron Boyd-Taylor (eds), Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism (Tübingen, 2009), 182–220;
Outhwaite, Ben and Bhayro, Siam (eds), '"From a Sacred Source": Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif. Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, Volume 1.
Jefferson, Rebecca, ‘Genizah Marriage Contracts: Contrasting Biblical Law and Halakhah with Mediaeval Practice’, in Deborah W. Rooke (ed.), A Question of Sex: Gender and Difference in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond (Sheffield, 2007), 162-73;
Niessen, Friedrich; Chipman, Leigh; Lev, Efraim, ‘A Hospital Handbook for the Community: Evidence for the Extensive Use of Ibn Abī’l-Bayān’s al-Dustūr al-bīmāristānī by the Jewish Practitioners of Medieval Cairo’, Journal of Semitic Studies 53 (2008), 103–18;
Jefferson, Rebecca and Vince-Dewerse, Ngaio, ‘When curator and conservator meet: some issues arising from the preservation and conservation of the Jacques Mosseri Genizah Collection at Cambridge University Library, Journal of the Society of Archivists 29/1 (2008), 41–56;
Jefferson, Rebecca, ‘A Genizah secret: the Count d’Hulst and the letters revealing the race to recover the lost leaves of the original Ecclesiasticus’; Journal of the History of Collections 21/1 (May 2009), 125–42;
Outhwaite, Ben, ‘Byzantium and Byzantines in the Cairo Genizah: new and old sources’ in Nicholas de Lange, Julia Krivoruchko and Cameron Boyd-Taylor (eds), Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism (Tübingen, 2009), 182–220;
Outhwaite, Ben and Bhayro, Siam (eds), '"From a Sacred Source": Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif. Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, Volume 1.
Institutions affiliated with this project:
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| University of Cambridge |
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| Ben Gurion University of the Negev |
| Beer Sheva |
| Israel |
Project staff and expertise:
| Principal staff member: | Professor Stefan Reif |
|---|---|
| Other staff: | Computing officer(s) / Technical supporter(s), PhD student(s), Postdoctoral researcher(s) / Research assistant(s) |
| External expertise: |
| Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) of record | Ben Outhwaite |
| Title | The decipherment, description and online accessibility of 16,500 medieval Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic Genizah manuscripts |
| Record created | 2008-04-22 |
| Record updated | 2010-07-17 12:17 |
| URL of record | http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2268 |
| Citation of record | Ben Outhwaite: The decipherment, description and online accessibility of 16,500 medieval Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic Genizah manuscripts. <http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2268> created: 2008-04-22, last updated 2010-07-17 12:17 |