Digital Bodleian (original) (raw)

Featured Collection

Chinese Maps, Manuscripts and Printed Books

Over 2,000 items from the Bodleian’s Chinese maps, manuscripts and printed books collections, acquired since the 17th century.

The Bodleian Library's Chinese collections date back to the earliest period of the Library’s history. Sir Thomas Bodley himself was instrumental in building up the collection, and during the following century the Library acquired other Chinese works from several bequests. The Bodleian now holds as many as a quarter of all the extant Chinese books that arrived in Europe in the 17th century.

Towards the end of the 19th century the Library acquired two large collections of missionary publications. These works have an interest which goes beyond their value as expositions of Christian doctrine: some are written in local dialects, others provide glimpses of the popular Chinese religious and social customs which the missionaries encountered in the course of their work; all illustrate the process whereby traditional Chinese block-printing was gradually replaced by Western typography.

Digitized items include MS.Chin.c.15 and MS.Chin.c.37, two painted albums depicting the manners and customs of the peoples inhabiting mountainous regions of Yunnan, Guizhou and southwest China; and the Selden Map of China, one of the first Chinese maps to reach Europe.

Featured Partner

Brasenose College

Five early modern estate maps from the archives of Brasenose College, Oxford.

Brasenose College was founded in 1509 by William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln, and Sir Richard Sutton, a lawyer and the first lay founder of a college in Oxford or Cambridge. Before the foundation of the College part of the site was occupied by one of the medieval Oxford halls, Brasenose Hall. The name is thought to originate from a 'brazen nose' - a bronze door knocker in the shape of a nose. Famous alumni include Robert Burton, John Buchan, William Golding, Michael Palin, David Cameron and Kate Allen.

Thanks to the generosity of the William Delafield Charitable Trust, Brasenose College has been able to digitize some of its collection of 18th century maps showing College estates across England. More will be digitized in the future, and the College also hopes to include more of its extraordinary manuscript and archive collections.

Featured Collection

ARCHiOx: Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Oxford

Manuscripts, maps, bindings, copper plates and portraits imaged for the ARCHiOx project.

ARCHiOx - Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Oxford – is a research and development partnership between the Bodleian Libraries and the Factum Foundation. Using technology conceived and developed at Factum Arte, the ARCHiOx project is producing extremely high-resolution three-dimensional scans of objects from across the Bodleian’s collections. The project, which began in 2022, has been funded by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.

The state-of-the-art equipment used for ARCHiOx employs principles specifically designed for the capture of low-relief surface texture. These techniques can be used to record the primarily flat, but texturally rich originals from the Bodleian’s collections in exceptionally high detail. This high-resolution, low-relief capture has been termed ‘2.5D’.

The 2.5D data produced by ARCHiOx can reveal textural details which are difficult to see and hard to record using traditional photographic techniques. Shaded renders visualise the surface texture of an object without colour or tone, while composite images reintroduce colour to these renders to create a highly detailed image which represents the material nature of the original object.