CONGRESS CANCELED The Ethical Dilemma of Collecting Manuscript Fragments: Loss, Gain, Opportunity, and Cost (A Roundtable)
Description
“Fragmentology" has emerged as one of the dominant subjects in the broader manuscript studies field as digital technologies have facilitated the identification, location, and reaggregation of widely dispersed individual folios originally from the same common manuscript. The reconstruction of broken manuscripts addresses questions across the spectrum of medieval book studies, including codicology, paleography, art historical and textual research, historical provenance, modern consumerism, and the contested and shifting value of manuscript fragments as either objects of connoisseurship or scholarship. Collecting fragments is a highly contentious topic, and this session will address it from institutional, private, commercial, and scholarly perspectives.
This will be a roundtable session that will highlight and discuss both the positive and negative aspects of fragment collecting. Participants will represent a number of different perspectives, including those of librarians/curators, university professors/teachers/researchers, private collectors, manuscript/fragment dealers, and students. Each participant will present a short 5-7 minute statement exploring their own approach to the ethics of fragment collecting and use, and the session will feature an open discussion of the question by the panelists and the audience. Eric J. Johnson
CONGRESS CANCELED The Ethical Dilemma of Collecting Manuscript Fragments: Loss, Gain, Opportunity, and Cost (A Roundtable)
Fetzer 1060
“Fragmentology" has emerged as one of the dominant subjects in the broader manuscript studies field as digital technologies have facilitated the identification, location, and reaggregation of widely dispersed individual folios originally from the same common manuscript. The reconstruction of broken manuscripts addresses questions across the spectrum of medieval book studies, including codicology, paleography, art historical and textual research, historical provenance, modern consumerism, and the contested and shifting value of manuscript fragments as either objects of connoisseurship or scholarship. Collecting fragments is a highly contentious topic, and this session will address it from institutional, private, commercial, and scholarly perspectives.
This will be a roundtable session that will highlight and discuss both the positive and negative aspects of fragment collecting. Participants will represent a number of different perspectives, including those of librarians/curators, university professors/teachers/researchers, private collectors, manuscript/fragment dealers, and students. Each participant will present a short 5-7 minute statement exploring their own approach to the ethics of fragment collecting and use, and the session will feature an open discussion of the question by the panelists and the audience. Eric J. Johnson