This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Libraries gathers twelve institutions whose ordinary custodianship of books and manuscripts has made each the sole holder of one object central to this atlas's own citations.
Sacred text manuscripts anchor several of these. Cambridge University Library has kept the bilingual gospel codex Theodore Beza gave it in 1581, with his own warning about its readings still attached. Trinity College Dublin has held the Book of Kells and Book of Durrow since the 1660s. The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana holds the Codex Vaticanus and, since 1807, the Codex Borgia. Cadbury Research Library in Birmingham holds Quran leaves radiocarbon dated in 2015, and Dar al-Makhtutat in Sana'a conserves the palimpsest Quran recovered from a mosque roof in 1972, its erased lower layer preserving a non standard text.
Others hold a manuscript acquired rather than excavated. The National Library of Russia's Firkovich Collection includes the Leningrad Codex, the oldest complete Hebrew Bible manuscript. The Bibliotheque nationale de France holds the Nazareth Inscription, acquired in 1878. Yale's Beinecke Library bought the Voynich Manuscript in 1969 from a dealer who had failed to find another buyer, and Dresden's Saxon State and University Library has held the Dresden Codex since its librarian bought it in Vienna in 1739.
Chicago's Newberry Library holds the Popol Vuh Manuscript within its Ayer Collection, and Israel's Yad Ben-Zvi Institute owns the Aleppo Codex while the Israel Museum displays it under loan, ownership and display split between two bodies in a way rarely visible to a visitor. The British Library is cited here as custodian of record for several manuscripts, including John Dee and Edward Kelley's angelic diaries.