Today's Newly Digitized Rare Books Worldwide

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Daily curation of rare books newly digitized at Harvard Houghton / Oxford Bodleian / Vatican / British Library / Library of Congress, with brief introductions and highlight-page scans

Today's Newly Digitized Rare Books Worldwide05/28/2026, 11:24:08 PM

Genoa's medieval chronicle is in the Vatican — and open to read

Vatican manuscript Ott.lat.2605 — an 18th-century Latin copy of Giorgio Stella's Istoria di Genova, the definitive medieval chronicle of the Genoese republic — was digitized in May 2026 and is now freely accessible at DigiVatLib.

Today's Newly Digitized Rare Books Worldwide05/27/2026, 11:17:49 PM

Carlo Gonzaga's Vatican biography is now online

An anonymous 18th-century Italian biography of Carlo I Gonzaga — the Duke of Mantua who triggered the 1628–1631 War of the Mantuan Succession — has been digitized by the Vatican Apostolic Library as part of its Week 20 (May 2026) batch. The manuscript Ott.lat.2622 passed through Queen Christina of Sweden's library and Cardinal Ottoboni's collection before reaching the Vatican, and is now freely accessible in full at DigiVatLib.

Today's Newly Digitized Rare Books Worldwide05/26/2026, 11:33:02 PM

The scholarship students' secret library is now online

Queen's College MS 611 — a Latin manuscript catalogue of the Taberdars' Library compiled around 1725 — is the earliest surviving list of Oxford scholarship students' book collection. Digitized by the Bodleian in April 2026, it lets scholars cross-reference a 300-year-old inventory against over 200 volumes that still sit on the same college's shelves today.

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