Dear Colleagues,
I am happy to announce that I now have available for viewing images taken over the last 125 years for nine pages of the 8th-century St Chad Gospels: https://lichfield.as.uky.edu. These photographs include up to five images for a page, beginning with images taken in 1887 and concluding with images taken by my imaging efforts in 2010. Once you click a page's thumbnail, the viewer automatically loads a page's full set of images. Choose the ones you want to compare from the viewer's drop-down lists. You can adjust the transparency of the top image through the viewer's slidebar.
I have also included a brief discussion and some preliminary findings from overlaying these images: https://lichfield.as.uky.edu/historical-images. I include an animated gif of an area that contains chipped pigment to provide one example of the aging (happily, these areas are rare).
I continue to think through ways that digital efforts can not only increase access to medieval manuscripts and digitally preserve them, but also take advantage of prior photographic and scholarly efforts to enhance or integrate them with current digital efforts, increasing their value and what we can know. As always, any comments or suggestions are appreciated.
All best, Bill