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Vatican and Bodleian Libraries [Oxford University] Launch Online Archive of Ancient Religious Texts
The Guardian ^ | 12/2/13 | Maev Kennedy

Posted on 12/03/2013 10:23:06 AM PST by marshmallow

Website funding from Polonsky Foundation includes Bodleian's 1455 Gutenberg Bible and aims to put 1.5m pages online

Some of the rarest and most fragile religious texts in the Vatican and Bodleian libraries, including ancient bibles and some of the oldest Hebrew manuscript and printed books, are being placed online in a joint project by the two great libraries, which will eventually create an online archive of 1.5m pages.

The website launched on Tuesday with funding from the Polonsky Foundation includes the first results of the four-year project, including the Bodleian's 1455 Gutenberg Bible, one of only 50 surviving copies of the first major book printed in the west with metal type.

The site will also host a growing collection of scholarly essays, and interviews with the Oxford and Vatican librarians, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who said the digitisation was of huge international significance.

"Where you can see these ancient texts there is just a lifting of the spirits … I think those who did the printing in the past would think the scanning was a very considerable improvement, it must have been very hard work. Essentially the scanners of today and the printers of the past are engaged in very similar work."

The two institutions are equally venerable. The Vatican library was founded in 1451 by Pope Nicholas V for "the common convenience of the learned", while the Bodleian opened to scholars in 1602 but incorporated Duke Humfrey's library of 1488, and including much older collections.

The two libraries hold material which was originally in the same collections, or even the same volumes, so the four-year project will reunite material separated for centuries.

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: Catholic; Current Events; History; Mainline Protestant
KEYWORDS: bodleianlibrary; epigraphyandlanguage; godsgravesglyphs; oxford; polonskyfoundation; vaticanlibrary

1 posted on 12/03/2013 10:23:06 AM PST by marshmallow
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To: marshmallow

Related (not duplicate) thread

Vatican, Oxford put ancient manuscripts online
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3097741/posts


2 posted on 12/03/2013 10:26:18 AM PST by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: marshmallow

bookmark


3 posted on 12/03/2013 10:39:51 AM PST by GOP Poet
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To: marshmallow

Scanning this material will take centuries.


4 posted on 12/03/2013 10:54:32 AM PST by Oratam
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To: marshmallow

Thanks for posting this. Looking forward to perusing their libraries.


5 posted on 12/03/2013 12:59:00 PM PST by OldNewYork (Biden '13. Impeach now.)
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Thanks marshmallow.

6 posted on 12/03/2013 4:51:22 PM PST by SunkenCiv (http://www.freerepublic.com/~mestamachine/)
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