The Biblioteca de la Universidad de Barcelona one of the many new digitized libraries to the DMMapp (we are now at 500+!). The link to the Barcelona University Library was given to us through a tweet from @Archivalia_kg (he also has an excellent blog in German!)
The Biblioteca de la Universidad de Barcelona website
This is the second digital library from spain we review, with the first one being the Biblioteca Nacional de España. The Universidad de Barcelona (here) is home to 69 digitized manuscripts dating from the 10th century until the 18th. The interface is excellent: The link we provide takes you directly to the manuscripts. Here you can choose to have a “thumbnail” overview of the manuscripts along with the standard list. Manuscripts are completely digitized from front to back, and you are able to download them in rather high-resolution (1500×1200 circa, depending on the manuscript). The images present, in my opinion, an evident “blue” tint, meaning that the there is “too much blue channel” in the digital pictures. The images you see in this post have been processed. Something to keep in mind when looking at the miniatures for research purposes. Furthermore, there is no indication of which folio is being looked at, or being downloaded; only a generic indication of a “page”. The website is available in Catalan, Spanish, and English. The available metadata is quite standard and nothing more: no description of what is being looked at except the title, author, call name, copyrights, etc. A little description on significant folios or miniatures would have been nice to see, but it would be huge quantity of work to be done.
Copyright the Biblioteca de la Universidad de Barcelona
The images from the the Barcelona University Library are public domain, that means that images can be downloaded and used for any purpose.and that’s always a welcome sight! You can share the images on your blog, publish them in your book or thesis, make videos out of them, or anything that comes to your mind. Very good!
Highlights from the Biblioteca de la Universidad de Barcelona
The Universidad de Barcelona digital collection is full of interesting manuscripts to be explored. Here are some examples:
Psalterium – Universitat de Barcelona. CRAI. Manuscrit. Ms. 165 Liber horarum – Universitat de Barcelona. CRAI. Manuscrit. Ms. 1841