International Literacy Day 2018 with Rise of Literacy project
Specimens of Calligraphy, Inglis, Esther; University of Edinburgh, CC BY
On September 8, International Literacy Day, established by UNESCO, is celebrated around the world. This year’s theme is ‘Literacy and skills development’. Literacy is strongly connected to improving people’s life and the growth of societies but they are still persisting challenges despite the global progress.
For several weeks on this blog we have been exploring how reading and writing evolved across Europe, thanks to our partners from Rise of Literacy project, who are working to digitally preserve precious textual works from collections across the continent. In case you missed it, so far you could read about:
– texts with no punctuation in Reading habits in the past;
– how to learn what was it like to live in the Florence of 1400 in How primary sources transcend time and transform our connection with history;
– medieval love affair captured in letters in The Correspondence of Heloise and Abelard: Love, Friendship and Philosophy in the Middle Ages;
– what happens when a book have no title page in Text Announcement in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books
– what was the most common reason to be condemned as an author and added to a list of forbidden texts in Book Censorship and Banned Books: the Index Librorum Prohibitorum
– how Italian publishers used travelling vendors to spread their prints in Travelling texts: information networks of the past
– what gossip columns and compressed tablets have in common in A Variety of Newspaper Formats;
More of literacy related blogs will appear in the future, but if you have enough of reading, take a look at some of our beautiful galleries, featuring calligraphy, images of children reading, and details of manuscripts.
The Artist’s Sisters Signe and Henriette Reading a Book, Constantin Hansen, 1826, Statens Museum for Kunst, CC0
