What are your approaches to finding manuscripts online

[anyasophira]

A

---

This is a good question, and it touches on two frustrating (but hard to fix) points Voynich researchers have to deal with:

• It's hard to figure out what's been written about a certain topic/MS before.
  
• The various online manuscript repositories and their browsers are a nightmare to navigate (how I wish they'd push for a shared standard).
  

I used to follow a now defunct blog that listed newly digitized illuminated manuscripts from one particular library (I don't remember the details). Going through those ended up building frustrations though, because it turns out the vast majority of manuscripts just aren't interesting to us. So I think it's better to search with purpose.

Additionally, we can't always assume that "known" manuscripts have been looked at from the angle you'll be looking at them. Maybe you're interested in handwriting, but manuscript x has only been studied for its imagery. 

Often, finding the right manuscripts involves a bit of luck, and maybe hours of search time. There may be shortcuts, but those are all case-dependent. It would indeed be interesting if we knew when and where new herbal manuscripts were digitized, but I have no idea how we could find out.

About the em-dashes, don't worry. A dash doth not a chatbot make

Thank you Koen that is exactly
I what I was afraid of, but it’s good to know I am not missing something obvious- this will save me time at least. I appreciate your help here. 

-A