No manuscripts were digitized in the first week of 2026 due to the holidays, so this week there will be a look back at the digitization work of 2025 in numbers. To start, some summary numbers covering the entire year:
To compare the topline number, here's the total number of manuscripts digitized per year since I started tracking at the beginning of 20183. For the third year in a row, the total number has decreased by more than 10%
There were roughly four "segments" to the year in terms of what fonds were being digitized. The early part of the year saw Barb.lat as the most common fond, along with Capp.Sist.Diari, work on which began in late 2024. Later in the year, after the bulk of the Diaries were completed, the main Capp.Sist became the major target during the summer and early fall. Throughout the year work continued on the Ott.lat collection, which is nearly 2/3 digitized at the current time. Newly added to the digital archives this past year was the Comboniani collection of Ge'ez manuscripts. It began the year with a total of three manuscripts, two of them scanned microfilm, in the repository and ended with 138 of the 300 or so volumes digitized4.
Looking at the overall Fond distribution in the year, we see much the expected pattern, with Barb.lat, Ott.lat and the two Capp.Sist collections covering nearly 75% of the total manuscripts this year5.
Sometimes it's also interesting to look at the unique or rare collections, those which just contributed a few volumes across the entire year6. Some unusual collections represented here are Borg.ill, containing Balkan manuscripts; Sire, containing copies of the Bull declaring the Immaculate Conception in various languages; and East Asian manuscripts from Vat.estr.or and Borg.cin.
select fond_code, count(*) from manuscripts where year(date_added) = 2025 and `ignore`=0 group by fond_code;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)select year(date_added) as year_added, count(*) from manuscripts where date(date_added) > "2018-01-21" and `ignore`=0 group by year_added ;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) = 2025 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) = 2025 and `ignore`=0 group by week_added, other_code;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) = "2025" 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) = 2025 and `ignore`=0 group by top_fond_code;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) = "2025" 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) = 2025 and `ignore`=0 group by top_fond_code;