The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant of $128,381 to a project that will develop tools to analyze medieval manuscripts. Known as Virtual Vellum, the project is led by NCSA's Peter Bajcsy with co-principal investigators Anne D. Hedeman, a professor of Art and History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Kevin Franklin, executive director of the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (I-CHASS), and Karen Fresco, associate professor in French and Medieval Studies at Illinois. The team also includes collaborators at the Worldwide Universities Network and the United Kingdom's University of Sheffield.

These scholars and researchers are working together to develop tools for analyzing the visual imagery embedded in several early manuscripts of Jean Froissart's Chronicles, which have been successfully digitalized and mounted on the Web. Their goal is to provide insight into both the construction of these specific manuscripts and more broadly into the functioning of the medieval Parisian book trade.