Structure and content
The structure of the website is easy to navigate. The home page gives direct access to a selection of manuscripts and has search masks for a simple text search and a search by shelfmark. Besides that, www.handrit.is features an advanced search that allows you to limit your search according to interest, e.g. time span or language. There are also a browse function, where you can scroll through uniform titles, supplied titles, verses, nicknames, keywords, people, places, and organisations. Finally, there is a bibliography.
The catalogue entries are based on TEI P5 conformant xml files, that can also be downloaded using the menu on the left in each entry. The minuity and correctness of the entries varies a lot, as they are based on the old printed catalogues that are gradually updated.
The digitised manuscripts can be browsed using the arrows of your keyboard. You can choose between two-page and single-page layout and thumbnail overview. The quality of the images is pretty high, so you can zoom in onto the page and look at the execution of the script, for instance, without everything dissolving into pixels. Although this function is not provided via any button, you can download any page using left or two-finger click. You won’t end up with the highest possible resolution, but it will be sufficient for most tasks. For work contexts, however, it would be more convenient if www.handrit.is offered a button to download the full manuscript at one click in order to facilitate offline work.