30-03-2024, 12:55 AM
(29-03-2024, 01:52 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(29-03-2024, 12:47 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can only advise that researching in an archive, even 'just' a library, in order to find a specific and desired item, is the wrong approach.
Don't ever expect to go to an archive and be the first to search any part of it. Or to be among the first 20.
I can only disagree on the basis of my experience, particularly with respect to cipher research. If one finds a reference to a specific document in a text or online that has not been digitised then it makes sense to either contact the archive and request a photoreproduction or visit the archive oneself whichever is most convenient and cost effective. Yes, in an ideal world one would search all archives for anything, but this is not practical. Certainly it makes sense to search a specific archive for relevant documents when one has reason to believe it might have such documents.
OK, that is not what I meant.
It is certainly possible, and useful, to contact an archive to request copies of items that have not been digitised before.
However, these are known items, that have been seen (and studied) by others before, and appear in catalogues and publications. Of course, often their descriptions are vague or too summary. It will be valuable to be able to see them for oneself.
The more adventurous research, where one does not yet know what is there to be found, is what I was thinking of.
Examples:
- finding references to the sale of the Voynich MS in the archival records of Rudolf's court, and related
- finding references to Voynich in Jesuit records
When reading the hitherto unexplored biography of Beckx (which certainly had been read by thousands of people before, though not by Voynich 'researchers' - it's written in Dutch), I found nothing of the kind I was hoping to find: references to his library, books, anything.
However, there were many other details that turned out to be very helpful only later and fortunately I took notes.
By the way, my post was not in response to @merrimacga, but to the suggestion that one should offer prize money for people to do archival research related to the Voynich MS.