Use Cases

Vita fratris Hroznatae: Theodora Newthinker's term paper

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Theodora Newthinker, a student of the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague, selected, as the topic for her term paper, comparison of legends about the life of Blessed Hroznata of Bohemia, whose canonization is now being considered by the Church.

She found in literature and on the Internet that three manuscripts of Vita fratris Hroznatae have survived and that all of them originate from an unknown Premonstratensian monk of Teplá Monastery. Two of the documents should still be deposited at the monastery under the shelf marks b1 and b4.

Theodora set out for Teplá. However, she discovered that only one of the manuscripts with the shelf mark b4 was still stored there. The manuscript b1 had disappeared and the librarian did not know where.

Disappointed, Theodora returned home. She tried to find on the Internet what could have happened with the lost document. Thanks to the Index of Digitized Heritage, she managed to look up that the manuscript b1 is now deposited in the National Library of the Czech Republic under a different shelf mark (Teplá MS.b.1). Fortunately, it has been digitized and made accessible in the digital library Manuscriptorium.

Theodora was led to the digital library by a persistent link of the digital copy, which makes part of the detailed record in the IdH. Thus, she did not have to go to Prague and she could study the manuscript comfortably from home. She then listed the relevant persistent link on the reference page of her term paper.