Horae Beatae Mariae ad usum Romanum (Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary Following the Roman Use), France, 1524 (review)

This edition represents a new stage in the development of high-quality facsimiles of early books and manuscripts. Octavo presents a relatively late example of a Book of Hours from the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress. It was written in 1524, at a time when printing was rapidly replacing this kind of book production. The facsimile contains many distinct features that will make the Horae Beatae Mariae and their accompanying artwork more accessible to a broad range of audiences. The ease of use and the informative essays by Christopher de Hamel and Donald Jackson make this an ideal first digital purchase for someone learning about this popular type of medieval book.

The facsimile comes in the form of a large Adobe Acrobat file—approximately 124 megabytes in size—on a CD-ROM. It requires Acrobat Reader 3.0 or higher (although version 5.0 or higher is recommended) and runs on Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, and Linux platforms. In addition to the Octavo edition, there is also a research edition that provides higher-resolution image files (jpg files) to enhance detailed study. The Acrobat format allows a more flexible approach for manuscript study. One can easily "page" through the book to find specific sections.

The introductory essays provide essential information on the significance of the Book of Hours in the late Middle Ages, the physical features and history of this particular manuscript, and the creation of the manuscripts themselves. Also included are English translations of the prayers and readings in the manuscript as well as a searchable Latin background text to help match text, translation, and manuscript image.

Years ago, when libraries began microfilming rare books, manuscripts, and fragile materials, they found they could produce relatively inexpensive surrogates for such items, and resources could be made available in one place that were otherwise widely (and unevenly) distributed. In the case of our own library, this meant that a scholar could study manuscripts from several libraries scattered across Europe or East Africa without moving from a desk. The promise of digitization (for whichthis CD-ROM acts as one harbinger) is that scholars may be able to study several different manuscripts simultaneously— and without ever entering a library.

There are still, however, unanswered questions about the future of digital preservation. How long will the CD and DVD formats remain standard for the storage and delivery of large files? What level of commitment is necessary to keep the data and its program current with industry standards? Is it possible to commit the same level of preservation to all handwritten books of the Middle Ages, or will only those deemed artistically worthy receive such elaborate attention?

In sum, this makes for a very attractive package that will allow libraries to provide an inexpensive but scholarly facsimile edition to different audiences with different levels of expertise. While the long-term impact of such digital facsimiles remains to be seen, the advantages for scholars include the ability to enlarge the image to study details; the ability to compare multiple manuscripts on one screen; access to more lifelike images in color than on black-and-white microfilm; immediate access to critical apparatuses; the ability to print excerpts easily; and a compact format that travels easily.

One can only applaud the work done by Octavo on this edition. The future for preservation work is bright, and their efforts to make such important medieval works more accessible are quite welcome. However, as librarians, we must continue to follow multiple avenues to preservation simultaneously to assure that the greatest amount of the human cultural heritage is preserved to the best level possible, whether in digital format, on microfilm, on slides and photographs, or as printed facsimiles.