In January 2013, e-codices in collaboration with the Martin Bodmer Foundation will open a new digitization center in the Canton of Geneva. In addition to digitizing the Martin Bodmer Foundation’s manuscripts, autographs and papyri, this studio will serve to digitize other resources from different regions of Switzerland. Thus e-codices will have two premium-equipped studios in St. Gall and in Cologny, each with a Graz camera table and a new Hasselblad H4D MS camera (50 Megapixel, multishot), for creating images of very high quality.

monumenta.ch is an experimental website for philologists and historians working with Latin texts. This database contains structured texts by more than a hundred authors for a total of several hundred ancient and medieval works. The website allows individual queries and can be used to construct word lists and word concordances.
But the centerpiece of momumenta.ch is the side-by-side presentation of the manuscript with electronically recorded editions of the same text. So far e-codices synoptically presents texts from no fewer than 106 manuscripts, among them 69 manuscripts from the Abbey Library of St. Gall and 18 manuscripts from the Engelberg Abbey Library.

For his innovative work and for his productive collaboration since 2006, we would like to sincerely thank Max Bänziger.

To the appreciation of manuscript researchers, in July of this year, Swiss libraries made e-codices’ facsimiles and meta-data available through a Creative Commons License. Further changes became necessary in order to conform the interfaces provided by e-codices to international standards without compromising fair use. As a consequence, Swiss libraries decided to change the terms of use in order to provide free use of all data accessible via the e-codices OAI-interface. This includes all basic meta-data (following Dublin Core), thumbnails and previews of all manuscript pages. See the new version of the terms of use.

In the digitization process, e-codices now generally uses flash photography. In the last two to three years, this preference has become established across the board among Swiss libraries not only because it leads to higher quality photographs, but especially for reasons related to conservation:

1. The potential damage caused to an exposed object by any kind of light is based on the quantity of light (H), which consists of the intensity of the light (lx) and the exposure time (t). The scientifically proven reciprocity law applies to flash photography, i.e. an illumination of 20,000 lx (very bright daylight or flash) for 1/4,000 second (average exposure time) equals an illumination of 50 lx (dimmed room light) for 0.1 second.

2. With flash photography, ultraviolet irradiation is virtually negligible.

3. A flash creates much less heat than a continuous light.

A question often raised in connection with digitization is whether gloves should be worn during the digitization process.

Martin Strebel, book conservator-restorer and advisor to e-codices, writes among other recommendations: “for wrapping the cover, gloves should be worn; however, for turning the pages inside a book, for reasons of conservation, gloves should not be worn since the reduced sensitivity of the fingertips could cause damage to papers and miniatures.” (cf. "Der Transport von mittelalterlichen Handschriften und anderen wertvollen Büchern").

The same point is made by The British Library in the article "White gloves or not white gloves".

Conclusion: Gloves may impress outsiders because they signal that an object of inestimable value is being handled. In fact, however, gloves very much impair sensitivity. Much more important are clean, dry hands, avoidance of direct contact with script and miniatures, and very careful turning of pages.