David Michelson and William Potter, Co-Editors of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Library: A New Digital Edition of Wright’s Catalogue co-presented at the “Syriac Studies in the UK: Past, Present, Future” conference hosted by Durham University, Durham, UK.

In addition to Michelson and Potter, seven student research team members from Vanderbilt University also assited in the presentation. The paper “Re-Writing Wright: Introducing A New Digital Edition of Wright’s Catalogue (1870-1872)”, coincided with the public beta release of the Syriac Manuscripts in the British Library project.

Conference abstract:

For nearly two centuries, the collection of manuscripts which the British Library acquired from the monastery of Dayr al-Suryān in Egypt has profoundly shaped the study of Syriac in Europe. Even today, William Wright’s richly detailed three-volume catalogue of the collection is an essential reference work in the field. This co-authored paper surveys recent scholarship on Wright’s catalogue and announces the publication of a new digital version of Wright’s catalogue prepared by a research team at Vanderbilt University.

The first part of the paper offers a scholarly evaluation of Wright’s catalogue in light of the exponential growth of Syriac studies in the last three decades. In addition to highlighting the many ways in which Wright’s catalogue remains an invaluable guide, this paper will also call attention to some of the less-noted misconceptions which have resulted from Wright’s editorial design choices, including both inadvertent lacunae and intentional omissions.

The second part of the paper introduces, Syriac Manuscripts in the British Library: A New Digital Edition of Wright’s Catalogue, a digital enhancement of Wright’s work published by Syriaca.org in partnership with the British Library as an open access online resource. The paper will demonstrate how new methods of digital representation can permit users to engage the Dayr al-Suryān manuscripts from diverse perspectives. For example, the print format of Wright’s original catalogue only permitted one organizational method (i.e. genre/thematic). The new database allows users to search and rearrange the manuscripts according to new and multiple criteria, many of which were not central to Wright’s own system of organization (e.g. chronology, additions, marginalia, scribes, or forms of decoration).

Finally, the paper concludes with a call for how this project might itself be further revised as a first step toward a comprehensive digital catalogue of all Syriac manuscripts in the British Library including those acquired before and after Wright’s tenure.