University of Pennsylvania alum Larry Schoenberg has been collecting manuscripts for decades, and over the past twenty years has been sharing parts of his collection with scholars at his alma mater. This week,
Penn Libraries announced the acquisition of 280 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts from Schoenberg, valued at $20 million, and part of the agreement is the creation of The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies.
Philadelphia is an international mecca for rare books, with world class collections at
The Free Library of Philadelphia (the largest with over
2,000 manuscripts),
The Library Company of Philadelphia,
The Rosenbach Museum, and
Bryn Mawr College.
The Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries lists 35 members.
Back at Penn, the goal with the Schoenberg Collection is to digitize the whole thing so that anyone in the world can access these historic documents without having to come to Philadelphia. Right now, the online collection is scattered among several
sites, and with the exception of the recently launched
Penn in Hand, many of the manuscript indexing pages are difficult to navigate.
"What we've done is made a commitment to the Schoenbergs to recatalog all the manuscripts according to the library standard," says Joe Zucca, Director for Planning and Communication for Penn Libraries.
The goal is to have all items scanned by 2012 to meld with Schoenberg's philosophy of combining rare and unique material with digital technology. Meanwhile, says David McKnight, the Director of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the 6th floor of Penn's Van Pelt is now undergoing an estimated $18 million renovation of the 6th floor, the Special Collections Center, to serve as home for the new institute, which will include classrooms and a digital media lab. McKnight is actively looking to hire a curator for The Schoenberg Institute, and is optimistic that the library can fill the position by the beginning of the new academic year. McKnight says that in addition to digital access, the Institute and its holdings will also be open to the public.
Source: Joe Zucca, David McKnight, Penn Libraries
Writer: Sue Spolan