Despite it being Christmas week, the Vatican did upload a single manuscript this week, a copy of John Climacus from Vat.gr.

As has become customary, I will use the end of year vacation to present some numbers about the progress of digitizations this year. First, a quick snapshot of the year in numbers

• Total Manuscripts Digitized⁵: 1973
• Manuscripts with at least one point of Metadata⁶: 1897
• Fonds Represented: 38
• Largest Fond: Vat.lat (578)
• Number of fonds with only one manuscript: 7

As this wraps up the 6th year of my tracking, here's a comparison of the total manuscripts digitized year by year¹:

The math agrees with the intuitive feel, this year was slower than the past two years, particularly the second half of the year. The week over week evolution of what fonds contributed the most volumes was more evident this year than in some years past. The Vat.lat contributed a significant number across the year, but was particularly active in the first quarter. During the second quarter Chigiani contributed a large number, particularly from their 17th and 18th C musical volumes. Another consistant collection was Ott.lat which added a smaller total number, but was as consistant across the year as Vat.lat. Rounding out the list of consistant contributors was Barb.lat, unsurprising as it is the second largest collection in the entire library. A very late addition, and the smallest of the top five fonds, is the Capp.Sist.Diari. Although it was not active until November, nearly 100 manuscripts from the 300 total were digitized in two months².

Looking across the entire year, many non-Latin alphabet collections are represented including Greek, Chinese, Russian and more.³.

The uncommon categories are listed below⁴

There may be some further wrapup next week, as it is likely to be a quiet one as well, but unlike in years past there was almost no code work to report on. The only significant update this year was to upgrade the version of FontAwsome that is used in order to add a proper BlueSky link.

Notes

1. select year(date_added) as year_added, count(*) from manuscripts where date(date_added) > "2018-01-21" and `ignore`=0 group by year_added ;
2. select week(date_added) as week_added, count(*) as added_per_week, if(fond_code in (select fond_code from (select fond_code, count(*) as added_per_fond from manuscripts where year(date_added) = 2024 and `ignore`=0 group by fond_code order by added_per_fond desc limit 5) as top_fonds), fond_code, "Other") as other_code from manuscripts where year(date_added) = 2024 and `ignore`=0 group by week_added, other_code;
3. select if(fond_code in (select fond_code from (select fond_code, count(*) as number_added from manuscripts where `ignore` =0 and year(date_added) = "2024" group by fond_code order by number_added desc limit 15) as sorted_fonds ), fond_code, "Other") as top_fond_code, count(*) from manuscripts where year(date_added) = 2024 and `ignore`=0 group by top_fond_code;
4. select if(fond_code in (select fond_code from (select fond_code, count(*) as number_added from manuscripts where `ignore` =0 and year(date_added) = "2024" group by fond_code order by number_added desc limit 15,50) as sorted_fonds ), fond_code, "Other") as top_fond_code, count(*) from manuscripts where year(date_added) = 2024 and `ignore`=0 group by top_fond_code;
5. select fond_code, count(*) from manuscripts where year(date_added) = 2024 and `ignore`=0 group by fond_code;
6. select count(*) from manuscripts where year(date_added) = 2024 and `ignore`=0 and (author is not null OR title is not null OR date is not null)
7. All graphs generated using SQLiteViz