The View From Kalamazoo

The British Library has recently expanded its “Turning the Pages” project to ten rare MSS and books:

The ten titles (each showing a couple dozen pages or so) and their descriptions:

Leonardo’s Notebook (Sketches by the great genius and notes in ‘mirror writing’)

Lindisfarne Gospels (Priceless treasure of Northumbrian art)

Luttrell Psalter (Fascinating glimpses of medieval life)

Sforza Hours (Renaissance masterpiece by Birago and Horenbout)

Golden Haggadah (Lavishly illustrated 14th century Hebrew manuscript)
Sherborne Missal (Magnificent 15th century service book)

Vesalius’ Anatomy (Landmark medical work of the 16th century)

Blackwell’s Herbal (George III’s personal copy of a beautiful botanical text)
Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an (Masterpiece of Arabic calligraphy)

Diamond Sutra (Chinese Buddhist scroll printed in 868. The world’s oldest,dated, printed book)

The site is so cool! You can hold the mouse button down and drag the “hand” cursor to open the cover and turn the pages. Two pages are shown at a time (just like a book). Each page is about 2.5″ wide and 4″ high (there’s a magnifying glass you can move around to get more detail).

[crossposted in my lj]