Edited Multimedia

Several web sites take advantage of the internet’s capacity to entertain two or three ways of presenting a single piece of information. These sites make use of text, pictures, sound, and video presentations to help bring medieval manuscripts to a wider audience.

The Medieval Bestiary Project
This project compiles a number of medieval bestiaries and presents the definitions of the animals in comparison to each other, along with the common medieval allegory that often accompanied such descriptions, and a picture of the relevant animal, insect, or stone. This compendium provides a very general look at medieval bestiaries.

Turning the Pages
This is a project by the British Library that combines images of manuscripts with texts/transcripts, and a program that makes it look as if you are actually turning the pages of a manuscript. An excellent idea for people who have trouble seeing the manuscript for what it is when trying to research them online.

Musick’s Monument
So far this is the only project I’ve found that actually uses music along with manuscript images to explain what medieval musical manuscripts contain. There are also Quicktime videos available and--another innovation--iPod wallpapers downloads.

Rossell Hope Robbins Library Projects
It would be a pity to try and use only one of these projects, since they are all helpful. Along with images from many different time periods, this web site shows how medieval manuscripts have perpetuated myths that are popular even now.