Burke explains the professional techniques employed by archivists and manuscript curators, describing what they do and why, so the beginning researcher has a foundation for understanding how to search and access personal papers. Burke surveys problems of organization, access, alternative sources, and legal issues with amusing anecdotes and examples.

The Yemeni Manuscript Tradition contributes to the study of the manuscript codex and its role in scholastic culture in Yemen. Ranging in period from Islam’s first century to the modern period, all the articles in this volume emerge from the close scrutiny of the manuscripts of Yemen. As a group, these studies demonstrate the range and richness of scholarly methods closely tied to the material text, and the importance of cross-pollination in the fields of codicology, textual criticism, and social and intellectual history. Contributors are: Hassan Ansari, Menashe Anzi, Asma Hilali, Kerstin Hünefeld, Wilferd Madelung, Arianna D’Ottone, Christoph Rauch, Anne Regourd, Sabine Schmidtke, Gregor Schwarb and Jan Thiele.

Burke explains the professional techniques employed by archivists and manuscript curators, describing what they do and why, so the beginning researcher has a foundation for understanding how to search and access personal papers. Burke surveys problems of organization, access, alternative sources, and legal issues with amusing anecdotes and examples.

Covering the entire spectrum of Arabic manuscripts, and especially the handwritten book, this book consists of a glossary of technical terms and a bibliography. The technical terms, collected from a variety of sources, embrace a vast range of topics dealing with the making and reading (studying) of Arabic manuscripts. They include: the Arabic scripts, penmanship, writing materials and implements, the make-up of the codex, copying and correction, decoration and bookbinding. A similar coverage is reflected in the bibliography. In view of the fact that, as yet, there is no concise monograph on Arabic manuscripts in the English language, this book is an important contribution to this field. And, since Arabic manuscripts represent an enormous resource for research, this work is an indispensable reference for all students of Islamic civilization.

Njáls saga is the best known and most highly regarded of all medieval Icelandic sagas and it occupies a special place in Icelandic cultural history. The manuscript tradition is exceptionally rich and extensive. The oldest extant manuscripts date to only a couple of decades after the saga’s composition in the late 13th century and the saga was subsequently copied by hand continuously up until the 20th century, even alongside the circulation of printed text editions in latter centuries. The manuscript corpus as a whole has great socio-historical value, showcasing the myriad ways in which generations of Icelanders interpreted the saga and took an active part in its transmission; the manuscripts are also valuable sources for evidence of linguistic change and other phenomena. The essays in this volume present new research and a range of interdisciplinary perspectives on the Njáls saga manuscripts. Many of the authors took part in the international research project "The Variance of Njáls saga" which was funded by the Icelandic Research Council from 2011-2013.

Script and writing were among the most important inventions in human history, and until the invention of printing, the handwritten book was the primary medium of literary and cultural transmission. Although the study of manuscripts is already quite advanced for many regions of the world, no unified discipline of ‘manuscript studies’ has yet evolved which is capable of treating handwritten books from East Asia, India and the Islamic world equally alongside the European manuscript tradition. This book, which aims to begin the interdisciplinary dialogue needed to arrive at a truly systematic and comparative approach to manuscript cultures worldwide, brings together papers by leading researchers concerned with material, philological and cultural aspects of different manuscript traditions.

"This volume brings together contributions by scholars focussing on peritextual elements as found in Middle Eastern manuscripts: dots and various other symbols that mark vowels, intonation, readings aids, and other textual markers; marginal notes and sigla that provide additional explanatory content akin to but substantially different from our modern notes and endnotes; images and illustrations that present additional material not found in the main text. These elements add additional layers to the main body of the text and are crucial for our understanding of the text's transmission history as well as scribal habits"--