I wanted to share this announcement from Johns Hopkins with the CNI-announce readership. This is a pioneering digital humanities project that for me suggests some fascinating new kinds of research questions dealing with the study of larger numbers of versions or variations of a work, or a genre than was feasible in a world of physical artifacts. I think we'll see this theme of managing a new abundance of evidence appear in a number of digital humanities programs in the near future.

There will be a session on the Rose project at the Fall CNI meeting.

Clifford Lynch

Director, CNI

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The Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France are pleased to announce the Roman de la Rose Digital Library available at http://romandelarose.org. 

The creation of this resource and the digitization of the manuscripts from the Bibliothèque nationale de France was made possible through generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of the Roman de la Rose Digital Library is to create a digital library of all extant manuscript copies of the Roman de la Rose, of which at least 270 are known to exist. We expect to have full digital surrogates of about 150 of these manuscripts available here by the end of 2009.  This Library features new content and enhanced functionality, and builds upon the previously developed prototype Roman de la Rose: Digital Surrogates of Medieval Manuscripts.  There is an associated blog available at http://romandelarose.blogspot.com