Issue 19 is here / important news regarding the future of the MeMO project and MMR

Welcome to the nineteenth issue of the newsletter Medieval Memoria Research (MMR). In this online newsletter you will find information on the work of scholars who research medieval memoria in the broad sense of the word.

Due to unforeseen circumstances this issue was unfortunately delayed, but we are pleased to be able to announce its publication now. As usual, it features many new publications, and other announcements.

The MeMO project

The next issue of MMR will be a special thematic issue about the MeMO project. The MeMO project was launched in 2008, and in 2013 its main product, the MeMO database was presented during a congress held in Utrecht. After its initial presentation to the public, a greatly scaled down team continued to update the database for many years, amending texts, adding new entries, and correcting and updating information with new research results, etc. As of 1 September 2018, these activities will also come to an end. This will mark the official end of the MeMO project. The twentieth issue of MMR, which is due to be released around September this year, will therefore celebrate MeMO and its history and discuss the work of those who have used MeMO for their own research.

At the time of writing the database provides detailed information about 3721 memorial objects and 433 memorial texts from the present-day Netherlands, as well as about the 843 institutions they originally came from. It is a valuable research tool. If you have used MeMO for school projects, your own research, as an educational tool, or if you have mentioned it in your papers or publications, please contact us. We’d love to hear about it, and perhaps feature it in MMR this summer.

The future of MMR

The end of MeMO also has consequences for the future of MMR. This newsletter was originally started as a satellite project, an integral part of MeMO but not solely about MeMO. It will be ten years old this year! At the moment we are uncertain of what MMR’s future ought to be. Should it be retired with MeMO, or would you, the reader still be interested in having MMR around? And if so, what form should it continue in? There are also practical concerns, such as who will continue to make the newsletter, how it will be funded, and possibly who will host it (MMR is currently hosted as a WordPress site by Utrecht University).

If you have feedback or ideas about the possible continuation of MMR, feel free to contact us. We are eager for other perspectives on this.

For now, we hope you will enjoy the current issue of MMR. Finally a reminder: the MMR website has been moved to a new location. The new address is: https://mmr.sites.uu.nl/. Please make sure to update your bookmarks.

As always, we warmly invite our readers to share news about congresses, publications, projects and other related subjects with us, so that these subjects may be announced in our future issues of this newsletter. Please consult the colophon for our contact details.

Charlotte Dikken

Editor of Medieval Memoria Research (MMR)