One of Devon's 'hidden treasures' short-listed in national competition (From Mid Devon Star)

One of Devon's 'hidden treasures' short-listed in national competition

1:04pm Friday 7th September 2007 in News By Jean Tilley

A unique manuscript of Old English poetry, The Exeter Book, has been chosen as a finalist in a national competition run by the British Library.

The Exeter Book, one of the treasures of Exeter Cathedral Library, was nominated by Devon County Council.

Only about 30,000 lines of Old English poetry survive, and the Exeter Book contains over a third of them.

The manuscript, dating from around 965-975, is probably the oldest book of vernacular poetry from Anglo-Saxon England.

It is also the oldest item on to the British Library's short list.

Hidden Treasures Brought to Life is a competition designed to give public libraries, together with libraries in local partner organisations, a chance to make some of the unique and historic items in their collections available online.

The eventual winners - one each from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - will have their nominated treasures digitised and hosted online by the British Library for three years.

The texts will be digitised using Turning the Pages software, a remarkable 3-D interactive system that allows people to explore digitised versions of the world's greatest books and manuscripts online.

The Exeter Book was one of three entries submitted by libraries in Devon.

The others were Orlando Whistlecraft's weather diaries for Thwaite, Suffolk, 1827-1892 from the National Meteorological Archive in Exeter, and the autograph manuscripts of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, from the special collections of the University of Exeter's Library.

Devon County Council's Executive Member for Culture, Cllr Sheila Hobden, said: "I am absolutely delighted that one of Devon's many hidden treasures' has been short-listed. It is a significant achievement as the competition was open to all libraries throughout the country.

"If The Exeter Book won, it would become available to a vast new audience via the internet."