CERL Portal

After a period of planning investigation and development which began in 2000, the CERL Portal went live in November 2005. All these years, CERL has been fortunate enough to have been able to rely on the Electronic Publishing Centre (EPC) of Uppsala University Library for the hosting, development and maintenance of the CERL Portal, and Ivan Boserup of the Royal Library in Denmark, Copenhagen, who worked tirelessly with EPC to further enhance the CERL Portal interface, and to interest creators of manuscript databases in allowing CERL Portal access to their data.

In the course of 2018, the CERL Board of Directors asked for a review of the CERL Portal. It became clear that the Z39.50 technology used in the Portal (in addition to OAI harvesting) was not so reliable any more, that the scope of the Portal and the materials of the various databases it brought together was quite wide in scope, and that the use figures for the CERL Portal were very low, resulting in an uncomfortable cost per search ratio. Although it is always difficult to decide to discontinue a service, the CERL Directors agreed that whilst the CERL Portal had been a service that fulfilled a need at the time it was created, this need was clearly no longer felt by students of manuscripts, and that the CERL Portal would be closed down from 30 April 2020.

In 2020/2019, the current chairman of the CERL Portal Working Group, Anders Toftgaard (KB Denmark) together with members of the CERL Manuscripts Experts Working Group, chaired by Scot McKendrick (British Library), set up a programme of work to determine whether the manuscripts community requires a new CERL Manuscripts Portal, and if they do, what the focus should be, what types of facilities would be required, and which representatives of national and regional manuscripts databases would be interested in jointly developing such a service. Please contact marian.lefferts@cerl.org if you require further information.

The CERL Portal provides access to distributed databases containing manuscript materials, printed works, photographic material and other special materials. The focus lies on manuscripts materials, but the Heritage of the Printed Book Database (HPB) and the English Short-Title Catalogue can be included in the search as well. Databases that are included are either ‘harvested’, i.e. the records have been collected from its original database and stored in an integrated, local index, or are accessed ‘on the fly’ – the records are collected through a live connection.

The portal, which has been developed by the Electronic Publishing Centre of the University Library of Uppsala in Sweden (EPC), offers simultaneous searches in either all databases, or in a selection of one or more. More databases will be added in the near future, making this search portal a useful instrument for those researching manuscripts and other early written materials.

Information about the way the CERL Portal is managed, and how you can participate in the development of the portal. Read more...

The CERL Portal was established after the successful completion of the CERL Manuscripts Project. The link gives full details of the project history. Read more...