Ancient texts published online by the Bodleian and the Vatican Libraries
From the post:
The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) have digitized and made available online some of the world’s most unique and important Bibles and biblical texts from their collections, as the start of a major digitization initiative undertaken by the two institutions.
The digitized texts can be accessed on a dedicated website which has been launched today (http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk). This is the first launch of digitized content in a major four-year collaborative project.
Portions of the Bodleian and Vatican Libraries’ collections of Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts, and early printed books have been selected for digitization by a team of scholars and curators from around the world. The selection process has been informed by a balance of scholarly and practical concerns; conservation staff at the Bodleian and Vatican Libraries have worked with curators to assess not only the significance of the content, but the physical condition of the items. While the Vatican and the Bodleian have each been creating digital images from their collections for a number of years, this project has provided an opportunity for both libraries to increase the scale and pace with which they can digitize their most significant collections, whilst taking great care not to expose books to any damage, as they are often fragile due to their age and condition.The newly-launched website features zoomable images which enable detailed scholarly analysis and study. The website also includes essays and a number of video presentations made by scholars and supporters of the digitization project including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop Jean-Louis Bruguès, o.p. The website blog will also feature articles on the conservation and digitized techniques and methods used during the project. The website is available both in English and Italian.
Originally announced in April 2012, the four-year collaboration aims to open up the two libraries’ collections of ancient texts and to make a selection of remarkable treasures freely available online to researchers and the general public worldwide. Through the generous support of the Polonsky Foundation, this project will make 1.5 million digitized pages freely available over the next three years.
Only twenty-one (21) works up now but 1.5 million pages by the end of the project. This is going to be a treasure trove without end!
Associating these items with their cultural contexts of production, influence on other works, textual history, comments by subsequent works, across multiple languages, is a perfect fit for topic maps.
Kudos to both the Bodleian and the Vatican Libraries!