02-02-2018, 02:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2018, 05:00 PM by davidjackson.)
(02-02-2018, 02:11 AM)-JKP- wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:Morten St George:
Yale has been stifling research on the VMS from the very beginning. It took decades to get carbon dating and now I hear they are restricting access to the VMS even by acknowledged academics. Someone made a huge mistake bequeathing the VMS to that *snipped by admin* institution.
You make it sound like they have some obligation to share their property. It belongs to them, not to us. The U.S. is not a communist country. Yale is not a public institution. It's a private university.
I am grateful to them for improving the scans. When I started researching the VMS, I was working from low-res black-and-white photocopy scans. They gave us better ones. They have also produced a very nice facsimile.
I don't blame them for limiting access. It's a fragile 600-year-old artifact.
I agree with much of what you say but do not think it should apply to items that can be fairly considered part of the cultural heritage of humankind. Such items belong to all of us. Moreover, on the VMS, Yale is disrespecting its own position as a leading educational institution.
It's doubtful that the VMS was bequeathed to Yale for it to be hidden away. I don't know what was formally stipulated on the bequest, but I suspect it was hoped that Yale would resolve the mysteries of the manuscript.
My scan of the VMS is of poor quality. Enlargement to better distinguish the writing quickly turns into blur. These days, teenage kids can make better resolution scans than that. I checked out purchasing the facsimile book but reader reviews say the resolution is equally bad.
In view of the manuscript's age, I agree that the general public should not be allowed to see and touch it. That's why it is necessary to make the highest possible resolution available, and to undertake a full range of tests on manuscript's chemical composition. That would reduce or eliminate the need to see it directly.
In particular, a high resolution scan might give visibility to dermatological patterns in the parchment, making it possible for dermatology experts from around the world to determine the animal used for parchment. Maybe that is what Yale is trying to prevent?