Highlights from the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection at the University of Pennsylvania

Lynn Ransom, Curator of Programs at the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS) and Board of Directors member of The Islamic Manuscript Association, and Nicholas Herman, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Curator of Manuscripts, will present highlights of the Schoenberg Collection’s Islamicate manuscripts and the various ways in which SIMS encourages and engages scholars around the world in support of research involving the collection.

The collection

 The Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection includes nearly 300 manuscripts and documents ranging in date from ca. 1900bc to the twentieth century, with particular focus on the eras of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

 With its emphasis on the history of science and the transmission of knowledge across time and geography, the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries brings together many of the great scientific and philosophical traditions of the ancient and medieval worlds. Documenting the extraordinary achievements of scholars, philosophers and scientists active in pre-modern Europe, Africa and Asia, the collection illuminates the foundations of our shared intellectual heritage.

The Lawrence J. Schoenberg collection of manuscripts was donated to the Penn Libraries in 2011 as part of a landmark gift establishing the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS). The mission of the Institute is to bring manuscript culture, modern technology and people together to bring access to and understanding of our intellectual heritage locally and around the world. Simply put, SIMS acts as a think-tank for manuscript studies in the digital age.

Speakers

Lynn Ransom is the Curator of Programs in and founding member of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. She is also the Project Director for the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts. Before coming to Penn, she held positions in the manuscript collections at the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD.

 Ransom has published on manuscript illumination of the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries as well as on Linked Open Data (LOD) in manuscript studies. Her current research interests involve the networks of transmission of premodern manuscripts from production to the present day and the research potential of Name Authorities in LOD contexts. From 2014 to 2017, she oversaw the NEH-funded redevelopment of the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts into an open-access, user-maintained finding aid for the world's premodern manuscripts and served as the Principal Investigator for the US team on the Mapping Manuscript Migrations project, a Round 4 Trans-Atlantic Platform Digging into Data Challenge Award recipient from 2017-20.

 Ransom is currently serving as the Director of Digital Medievalist (until 2022), the President and Executive Director of Digital Scriptorium, which is currently being redeveloped under her direction to become a national union catalogue of global manuscripts in US collections, and as a Board of Directors member of The Islamic Manuscript Association (until 2023). She is also Co-editor of the Schoenberg Institute's journal Manuscript Studies. A list of her other publications can be found here. 

Nicholas Herman is the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Curator at the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies and Medieval Studies Librarian at Penn Libraries. His teaching and research focus on manuscript illumination and its intersection with other media in the fifteenth and early sixteenth-centuries. Prior to arriving at Penn in 2016, Dr Herman held fellowships at the Université de Montreal, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. From 2007 to 2010, he worked in the Department of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. He has contributed to numerous catalogue and exhibition projects in Europe and North America. His books include Le livre enluminé, entre représentation et illusion (2018), Making the Renaissance Manuscript: Discoveries from Philadelphia Libraries (2020), and, cowritten with Anne-Marie Eze, Bourdichon's Boston Hours (2021). In Spring 2020 he was Craig Hugh Smyth Fellow at Harvard University's Villa I Tatti.