Digital Facsimiles and the Modern Viewer: Medieval Manuscripts and Archival Practice in the Age of New Media

Through an engagement with theory from the fields of art history, anthropology, and sociology, this article examines the archival existence of medieval manuscripts and facilitates an understanding of archival practice and its effects on user experience from the perspective of the researcher, rather than from that of the archivist or information professional. In an exploration of notions of materiality and virtuality, the author addresses the material and institutional existence of medieval manuscripts and traces the evolution of the facsimile as a solution to problems of access. Within this framework, the various altered engagements with manuscripts in physical and digital form are assessed in order to establish the costs and benefits of virtuality. The roles of new technologies that produce high-quality facsimiles are investigated through theories of (re)presentation with respect to visual materials, including images and historical text.