Europa Inventa: Early European Objects in Australasian Collections

Australasian libraries, galleries and museums hold many thousands of unique and irreplaceable European manuscripts, art works and historic objects dating from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. They are of great value to researchers - both in Australasia and in Europe - not just for their contents but for what they reveal about the persistence of the Early European heritage in Australasia. Collectively and individually, they are unique national treasures of Australia and New Zealand. Europa Inventa ("Europe Discovered") is the first systematic description of these Early European materials. The Europa Inventa database currently contains information about 1,700 artworks and 300 medieval manuscripts held in the major Australian libraries, galleries and museums. It is one of the digital services developed for the ARC Research Network for Early European Research (NEER). Europa Inventa contains records drawn from Sinclair 1969 (Medieval manuscripts), Tomory and Gaston 1989 (Paintings), the University of Western Australia Library, museum and gallery catalogues on the Web. Europa Inventa will also incorporate the results of a 2010-2012 Australian Research Council Linkage Project which will be carrying out systematic research into all the medieval manuscripts in Victorian public collections, as well as creating digital images for a selection of them. This project is led by Emeritus Professor Margaret Manion (University of Melbourne) and Shane Carmody (Director of Collections and Access, State Library of Victoria).