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Digital Library of Written Cultural Heritage Národní knihovna Ceské republiky (National Library of the Czech Republic), 2015. <http://www.manuscriptorium.com>
Manuscriptorium is a dual language (Czech and English) digital archive and research environment. A project of the Národní knihovna Ceské republiky (National Library of the Czech Republic), Manuscriptorium has received development assistance from Oxford University Computing Services in Oxford, England; Poznan' skie Centrum Superkomputerowo-Sieciowe in Poznan' , Poland; and the Centro per la comunicazione e l'integrazione dei media, in Florence, Italy. This review pertains to version three, which is available in beta at http:// www.manuscriptorium.com. Version two can still be accessed at http:// v2.manuscriptorium.com/. According to project documentation, Manuscriptorium aims to provide access to "all existing digital documents in the sphere of historic resources," and to make all of this content available via a "single digital library interface." To that end, the repository currently aggregates content from more than 100 partners from over 20 countries. Digital holdings from contributing libraries and archives within the Czech Republic obviously make up the core of available resources, and international partners of particular note include the national libraries of Kazakhstan, Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Spain, Belarus, Iceland, Sweden, Lithuania, Poland, Armenia, and Croatia.
Overall, the portal is well-organized and fairly intuitive to use. Help documentation, including a PDF version of a slide presentation, titled "A Gentle Introduction," and three brief video tutorials on how to use the search tools, is accessible under "User guides, tutorials, and more" near the bottom of the home page. Without logging in, one can access the research environment and browse the catalog by clicking "Library" in the main navigation menu. Saving search queries, identifying "favorite" resources, and creating custom "virtual" documents and collections, require a user account. Account creation is free, takes less than five minutes, and does not require institutional affiliation.
Manuscriptorium claims to provide access to more than 300,000 descriptive records, including more than 24,000 digital documents comprising upwards of 5,000,000 individual images. A search for every record in the catalog in fact returned nearly 400,000 individual records. Within the research environment, search tools, login, and, after login, access to the account management area are located in a bar at the top of the screen. By default, search queries look for terms in every...