Getting Sidetracked: Image Databases Part 4.

Did I mention that my list is long? Really, really long? Here we go on, with more links to picture databases and manuscripts:

The Utrecht Psalter, dated to 820-830. There's also a newer, annotated version, where you can get exact inforamtion about which bit of the illustrations corresponds to which bit of the text. No searching for picture contents, though, in either version.

The Harry Ransom center database is called "image database", but it is more a manuscript list - at least my two standard searches for "spindle" and "yarn" yielded no resuls. Searching for "Mary" did - so texts or titles are in the database, but not detailed image contents. (This, by the way, is how I test.) Oldest MS is the Tegernsee Miscellany from around 1000. If there is adigital facsimile available, you can download it as pdf, no previews of the MSS online.

You can also search the collections at the V&A London, which will yield images of objects. No manuscripts, though.

Both texts and images from a number of German museums and libraries can be found via the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek. Obviously search results will depend on how well each participating institution as tagged their items, but you will get results for at least some image content.

KiK-IRPA in Brussels, the Belgian Royal Institute for art, has a search engine called Balat. It will search image contents, but is best used with Dutch or French terms on the appropriate pages - at least my impression is that the English terms are patchy at best.

That's it for today for you. For me, the list has shrunk a bit more than just by those items - I had a few obsolete ones, and a few doubles. So there is actual visible progress - which is really nice! And I can tell you that I have glimpsed at least one more proper picture database further down the list...