Lynn Ransom
Lynn Ransom joined Penn Libraries in February 2008 as the Project Manager for the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts and is a founding member of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. Lynn holds a B.A. in art history from the University of the South and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in medieval art history, with an emphasis on manuscript illumination. Before coming to Penn, Lynn held positions in the manuscript collections at the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD. She also served as a researcher at the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University. She has published on manuscript illumination of the 13th and 16th centuries. Her current research interests involve the provenance of medieval manuscripts and the research potential of Name Authorites in Linked Open Data contexts.
Lynn oversaw the NEH-funded redevelopment of the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts (2014-2017) into an open-access, user-maintained finding aid for the world's pre-modern manuscripts and served as the Principal Investigator for the US team on the Mapping Manuscript Migrations project, a Round 4 Trans-Atlantic Platform Digging into Data Challenge Award recipient (2017-2020). She is currently serving as the Director of Digital Medievalist (until 2022) and the President and Executive Director of Digital Scriptorium (2021-2023). She is also Co-Editor of the Schoenberg Institute's journal Manuscript Studies. A list of her other publications can be found here.
The early twentieth century has been characterized as a golden age of American book collecting. Many of those books were bought in Britain, where voracious American appetites for rare books and manuscripts became a popular stereotype, often accompanied by hand-wringing about the impact on British cultural heritage. This lecture aims to go beyond these stereotypes to explore what American collectors thought they were doing as well as how their collecting was reported in the press, and why, despite occasional public protests, the British did nothing to try to prevent books and manuscripts going to America.
A recording of the lecture is available via this link.
More information about the SIMS Online Lecture Series can be found here.
Laura Cleaver is a Senior Lecturer in Manuscript Studies at the Institute of English Studies in the School of Advanced Studies at the University of London. Her research concentrates on medieval manuscripts, encompassing their production, circulation, and reception. She currently leads the ERC-funded project CULTIVATE MSS to assess the significance of the trade in medieval manuscripts for the development of ideas about the nature and value of European culture in the early twentieth century.
Danielle Magnusson is a post-doctoral fellow for the CULTIVATE MSS project. After completing her doctorate at the University of Washington in English Literature and Textual Studies, she has lectured and taught at the School of English at Trinity College Dublin. Her research within CULTIVATE MSS centers on the network of collectors, dealers, and scholars that contributed to the golden age of American book collecting (1895-1930).
