About the Project

This project seeks to recreate the lost sense of physicality that could have come with the usage of the Medieval Folded Almanac; a sense of unfurling and unfolding that occupies dimensions of space and time and offers obstacles towards readership. Obstacles like shape, print, language, adjacency to other similar manuscripts all become even more complicated in the archive when and were one may often find themselves unable to actually touch the item they seek to study. In the archives at UCR I found a wonderful staff and a wealth of resources but I did notice that the plastic coating of UCR 006-UCR 009 all served to provide even more obstacles to readership. It is not the fault of the archives that they must preserve their items; this is the very purpose of the archives. However it is the duty of the scholar to point out the complexities of experience no longer immediately apparent. Therefore I have offered a web experience which slowly unfolds in the same way that the Medieval Almanac would have. I limit perceptions and force a focus upon minutiae and details before allowing overview. I accomplish both in terms of each individual leaf as well as the structure of my project itself. Dr. Sheila Liming, Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Dakota, described it as "both cool and very confusing / hard to navigate. Love the close-ups of the wax seals, though". Indeed, I did not want my arguments to be easy to see right away, nor did I want full viewing of any of the leaves until the end of each page, this is a digital embodiment of folding and unfurling. This in turn forces the reader to give greater attention to each small detail of each individual leaf. One must take into account both sides of the manuscript, they must explore the unique attributes of the page, the holes, the tears, the suturing. In the end the experience the reader has with the site is an adaptation of the process of reading applied to the Medieval Folded Almanac through the use of the digital medium.