The Atlas of Early Printing is an interactive site designed to be used as a tool for teaching the early history of printing in Europe during the second half of the fifteenth century. While printing in Asia pre-dates European activity by several hundred years, the rapid expansion of the trade following the discovery of printing in Mainz, Germany around the middle of the fifteenth century is a topic of great importance to the global history of communications, technology, and the dissemination of knowledge.
The project ‘The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages’ will show the importance of medieval reading culture as a European movement by bringing together (digitised) manuscripts produced between c. 500 and c. 1550 from across Europe, unlocking their educational potential by curational and editorial enrichment, using innovative ways for displaying and handling digital objects in an educational context.