With the support of a grant from the American Musicological Society’s Early Music Program Fund, the Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission (DACT) project seeks six students for work in Summer 2026 to catalog fragments from the collection of Otto F. Ege for the Cantus Database.The American manuscript dealer Otto F. Ege (1888-1951) dismantled and sold hundreds of medieval manuscripts, profoundly shaping North American collections. A growing literature has traced Ege’s manuscript fragments, with particular attention to those included in his Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts (FOL) portfolios due to their systematic dissemination. In Summer 2026, DACT will assemble a team of six students to index fragments of the liturgical chant manuscripts represented in Ege’s FOL portfolios for the open-source Cantus Database (https://cantusdatabase.org), a resource essential to the study of Latin liturgical chant.
We invite graduate and upper-level undergraduate students currently studying at North American universities to apply for six short-term positions to help describe and inventory the liturgical fragments included in Ege’s FOL portfolios. These manuscripts can give valuable insights about historical musical practices, but only if their data are accessible.
Students will:
- Become familiar with Otto F. Ege’s Fifty Original Leaves portfolios, which transmit a variety of book types, scribal conventions, and paleographic challenges
- Contribute to one of the longest-running digital musicology projects
- Create online publications in a database used by tens of thousands of people each year in a variety of fields
- Become part of a network of chant scholars across the globe
- Help bring to light chant sources in North America
- Contribute to the understanding of historical music and music manuscripts
Previous experience with chant, Latin, and medieval liturgy is helpful, but not required. Students will be mentored by members of the DACT team. Each participant will receive an honorarium of $500 (USD) for approximately 25-30 hours of work. Initial transcriptions and meetings with DACT mentors should be completed in Summer 2026. To apply for one of the positions, send a letter of interest with your affiliation, academic year, the name of a Faculty supervisor or a referee who can support your application, and a brief description of interest (maximum 200 words) by Friday, May 22, 2026 to dact.fragments@gmail.com, copied to Fragments Team Lead Alison Altstatt (alison.altstatt@uni.edu), Project Manager Debra Lacoste (debra.lacoste@dal.ca), and Research Associate Anna de Bakker (anna.debakker@mcgill.ca)
