Saving A Treasured Trove, Ever So Slowly

LAT ^ | 2-5-2007 | Suzanne Muchnic

[blam]

Saving a treasured trove, ever so slowly

Ancient manuscripts from Mt. Sinai move into the digital age with the help of a Bedouin camel driver's son.

By Suzanne Muchnic, Times Staff Writer

SINAI, Egypt — On a refreshingly cool morning, before the sun drenches every exposed grain of sand in this vast desert, Hemeid Sobhy sets out on foot from the Bedouin village where he lives with his parents and sisters. Neatly dressed in jeans, sport shirt and sturdy sandals, he walks 40 minutes to the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine.

He passes through a narrow door in the monastery's thick walls and makes his way past an ancient church and a warren of buildings, clustered along winding pathways. A stairway takes him to the third floor of a relatively modern structure along the monastery's south wall, where he enters the library, greets a monk in a long black robe and gets to work.

His office is an 8-foot-square, 8-foot-tall tent of clear plastic sheeting stretched over a metal frame. A filtering system keeps the air free from dust. Erected in a small room at the end of the cavernous library, the tent is equipped with a computer, a large-format digital camera, two flash units on tripods and a metal cradle designed to hold fragile manuscripts safely in place while they are photographed.

The setup could hardly seem more out of place at the oldest continuously operating monastery in Christendom. But St. Catherine's is entering the Age of Technology — with the help of Father Justin Sinaites, a 57-year-old American monk from El Paso, and Hemeid, the 23-year-old son of a Bedouin camel driver. They are implementing a digital photography project that will make high-resolution images of the library's closely guarded manuscripts available to scholars all over the world.

[taxcontrol]

Good. Get the digital copies made and distributed across the globe before the muzies decide to burn the place down for it heretical texts.

[Publius6961]

They are implementing a digital photography project that will make high-resolution images of the library's closely guarded manuscripts available to scholars all over the world.

This is the part that always fills me with despair. A Twofer:
Why should treasured history data always be "closely guarded"? What can be the motivation aside from the obvious danger of theft or malicious or accidental destruction?

The other is why do "scholars" have the only access to these treasures? Before xerography and digital imaging, there was a relentless logic to assuming that only a small, limited number could enjoy the luxury of viewing them. Allowing only scholars under those circumstances made sense.

But with the digital revolution, anyone can and should be able to enjoy the identical images that the scholars do, for only a few dollars.

What's the reasoning behind not allowing that?

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 2/05/2007. Thanks blam.

[SteveH]

bad links?