Manage

Today's Newly Digitized Rare Books Worldwide

Public

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 Worldwide05/27/2026, 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.

Today's Newly Digitized Rare Books Worldwide05/26/2026, 02:04:31 AM

A Florentine Citizen's 45-Year Record Is Now Online

Vatican Ott.lat.2576 — Memorie Storiche di Firenze 1501–1546 by Giulio Ughi — is a plain, undecorated 282-page manuscript in mercantesca cursive covering the Medici restorations, the Sack of Rome, and the end of the Florentine republic. Digitized in Vatican Week 20, 2026, it is now freely viewable on DigiVatLib.

No more Drops