Brief History

Since 2005 e-codices has been digitizing manuscripts from all regions of Switzerland. During the first two years of the project, as a result of a joint pilot project with the Abbey Library of St. Gall, 130 manuscripts from the Abbey Library were published online on the CESG (Codices electronici Sangalleses) website. Thanks to generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, e-lib – Swiss electronic library, and numerous other funding sources, e-codices has been able to expand to include manuscripts from all over Switzerland. As the “Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland” e-codices offers free online access to medieval and early modern manuscripts from public and church-owned collections as well as from numerous private collections. Since 2013, e-codices has been integrated into swissuniversities' national program “Scientific information: Access, processing and safeguarding” for the establishment of digital infrastructure. e-codices works cooperatively worldwide with several hundred specialists who are performing research on Swiss manuscripts, and we operate two digitization centers: the St. Galler Digitalisierungszentrum and the Centre de numérisation de Genève in Cologny.

e-codices is an initiative of Prof. Dr. Christoph Flüeler, Professor for Manuscript Studies and Medieval Latin and a member of the Medieval Institute at the University of Fribourg.