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Discovery of the hidden manuscripts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Tatiana Nikolova-Houston*
Affiliation:
School of Information, University of Texas at Austin, 2100 Rio Grande, Austin, Texas 78705, USA
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Abstract

Slavic manuscripts present unique problems to the librarian, curator and scholar. Slavic works are marginalized in Western library institutions and educational curricula due to misconceptions about their intellectual value, the difficulties of studying them in Soviet and then post-Soviet Eastern Europe, and their lack of documentation, preservation and conservation. Cross-disciplinary interest, however, has expanded research beyond geographical and temporal boundaries to incorporate the technologies and viewpoints of literary criticism, historiography and even information architecture and hypertext theory. This article describes the author’s discovery of Slavic medieval manuscripts and her efforts to preserve, catalog, digitize, study and popularize them in a West that views the Middle Ages through the clouded lens of contemporary popular culture.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 2006

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