“In the beginning”...bringing the scrolls of Genesis and the Ten Commandments online

<br />A little over a year ago, we helped put online five manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls—ancient documents that include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence. Written more than 2,000 years ago on pieces of parchment and papyrus, they were preserved by the hot, dry desert climate and the darkness of the caves in which they were hidden. The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQV_rW8PAMsYUzSrByeHQrhJIlvWTftGmvQWTri0MsefRzMqf3dTvf1Qxs_1SL8zu6pnPj6q1GAvDz6VOwHi6GEq0meOfQ0lfE1gq2BqYIccBpEnNxOY-bXcsrvLFV76IE_R9NJ7pk8ec/s1600/10+COMMANDMENTS+-+photo+credit+Shai+Halevi,+courtesy+of+Israel+Antiquities+Authority.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQV_rW8PAMsYUzSrByeHQrhJIlvWTftGmvQWTri0MsefRzMqf3dTvf1Qxs_1SL8zu6pnPj6q1GAvDz6VOwHi6GEq0meOfQ0lfE1gq2BqYIccBpEnNxOY-bXcsrvLFV76IE_R9NJ7pk8ec/s640/10+COMMANDMENTS+-+photo+credit+Shai+Halevi,+courtesy+of+Israel+Antiquities+Authority.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br />Today, we’re helping put more of these ancient treasures online. The Israel Antiquities Authority is launching the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, an online collection of some 5,000 images of scroll fragments, at a quality never seen before. The texts include one of the earliest known copies of the Book of Deuteronomy, which includes the Ten Commandments; part of Chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis, which describes the creation of the world; and hundreds more 2,000-year-old texts, shedding light on the time when Jesus lived and preached, and on the history of Judaism.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2012/12/in-beginningbringing-scrolls-of-genesis.html" target="_blank">Click here to read this article from Google</a></b><br />

“In the beginning”...bringing the scrolls of Genesis and the Ten Commandments online

A little over a year ago, we helped put online five manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls—ancient documents that include the oldest known bibl...

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The Geese Book – medieval manuscript now available online

<br />One of the most interesting manuscripts of the late Middle Ages is now available online – The Geese Book, a lavishly and whimsically illuminated, two-volume liturgical book, can now be accessed through a project from the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.<br /><br />The Geese Book was produced in Nuremberg, Germany between 1503 and 1510, and gives the complete liturgy compiled for the parish of St. Lorenz, which was used until the Reformation was introduced in the city in 1525.<br /><br />The volumes are renowned for their high quality decorative illumination including fanciful pictures, provocative and satirical imagery of animals, dragons, and wild people. The work takes its name from an enigmatic illustration showing a choir of geese singing from a large chant manuscript with a wolf as their choirmaster. A fox, who has joined the choir, extends his paw menacingly in the direction of one of the geese.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://www.medievalists.net/2012/11/28/the-geese-book-medieval-manuscript-now-available-online/" target="_blank">Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net</a></b><br />

The Geese Book – medieval manuscript now available online

One of the most interesting manuscripts of the late Middle Ages is now available online – The Geese Book, a lavishly and whimsically illumin...

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Medieval Arabic manuscripts, East India Company papers, to go online

<br />The British Library and Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development have unveiled an ambitious partnership to transform people’s understanding of the history of the Middle East, and the region’s relationship with Britain and the rest of the world.<br /><br />The £8.7 million project was announced this morning at the British Library’s flagship building in St Pancras, London. Its plans will digitise more than 500,000 pages from the archives of the East India Company and India Office, in addition to 25,000 pages of medieval Arabic manuscripts – all of which will be made freely available online for the first time.<br /><br />The digitisation will take place over the next three years at the British Library, in close cooperation with the new Qatar National Library, and much information will be available in both Arabic and English. Once live, the site will also offer users the opportunity to add their own Gulf-related stories and memories, enabling them to contribute to the online resource, whether by sharing images of mementoes and old photographs, or by recounting the stories their grandparents once told them. In this way, historical items from living memory will be added to the archive of items dating back several centuries.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://www.medievalists.net/2012/07/19/medieval-arabic-manuscripts-east-india-company-papers-to-go-online/" target="_blank">Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net</a></b><br />

Medieval Arabic manuscripts, East India Company papers, to go online

The British Library and Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development have unveiled an ambitious partnership to transfor...

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European medieval and WWI history digital archiving project gets €6.5m in EU funding

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirBt0nbONsJVJz_qttkVY5a14ua7ZTKngb4MXKgO4XJ4aCzJKPuZ9-33LAz8LyJIUo_-llP2P3VZZCIZfbiwg7joLelG2-exhFxmr4pqQA_CphvILnvAq6Tvf_9RK-36udc4teEI3SS5k/s1600/eu_img.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirBt0nbONsJVJz_qttkVY5a14ua7ZTKngb4MXKgO4XJ4aCzJKPuZ9-33LAz8LyJIUo_-llP2P3VZZCIZfbiwg7joLelG2-exhFxmr4pqQA_CphvILnvAq6Tvf_9RK-36udc4teEI3SS5k/s320/eu_img.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>Trinity College Dublin (TCD) is leading a four-year collaborative project called CENDARI to digitise geographically dispersed historical data from the medieval European era and from World War I so scholars, and eventually the public, will be able to access everything from illuminated medieval gospels to WWI propaganda using one online portal.<br /><br /> The CENDARI project, which stands for Collaborative European Digital Archive Infrastructure, has just been awarded €6.5m by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme to carry out the project.<br /><br /> Apparently the aim is for CENDARI to provide a model that is not only relevant for the digitisation of historical data, but also for other scientific fields, such as biomedical images and environmental data.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/27664-european-medieval-and-wwi/" target="_blank">Click here to read this article from Silicon Republic</a></b>

European medieval and WWI history digital archiving project gets €6.5m in EU funding

Trinity College Dublin (TCD) is leading a four-year collaborative project called CENDARI to digitise geographically dispersed historical dat...

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University of Oxford and Vatican to digitize 1.5 million pages of historical texts

<br />A collaboration between the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana at the Vatican will bring historical texts dating back to the Middle Ages into the digital era. 1.5 million pages from both collections will be digitised and made publicly available.<br /><br />The Bodleian Libraries and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana will embark on a new collaborative digitisation project with the aim of opening up repositories of medieval and early modern texts and making a selection of their remarkable treasures freely available online to researchers and the general public worldwide.<br /><br />The digitised collections will be in three subject areas: Greek manuscripts, 15th-century printed books (incunabula) and Hebrew manuscripts and early printed books. These areas have been chosen for the strength of the collections in both libraries and their importance for scholarship in their respective fields. The project will span four years and will result in approximately 1.5 million pages being made available in digital format<br /><br /><b><a href="http://www.medievalists.net/2012/04/12/university-of-oxford-and-vatican-to-digitize-1-5-million-pages-of-historical-texts/" target="_blank">Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net</a></b><br />

University of Oxford and Vatican to digitize 1.5 million pages of historical texts

A collaboration between the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana at the Vatican will bring histori...

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Medieval Monastic Library of Lorsch recreated online

The unique holdings of the medieval monastic library of Lorsch, currently scattered over 68 libraries worldwide, are being re-compiled into a virtual library. Heidelberg University Library and local government officials in Germany have been working since March of 2010 to publish the 330 surviving Lorsch manuscripts and manuscript fragments online. The project by the name of “Bibliotheca Laureshamensis – digital” is being funded by the State of Hesse with 450.000 euros and will continue through 2013.<br /><br />“The virtual reconstruction of the former library of Lorsch Abbey, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, gives us the chance to study the abbey’s intellectual foundation, and the Carolingian world view in general, in depth for the first time”, said Eva Kühne-Hörmann, the Hessian Minister of Higher Education, Research and the Arts, during the presentation of the project. “This outstanding endeavour, which is of great interest to the State of Hesse, has united experts from Hesse and Baden-Württemberg in an exemplary, cross-border cooperative effort that reflects the historic significance and geographical location of the monastic library of Lorsch between the palatinate and the diocese of Mainz.”<br /><br />The Bibliotheca Laureshamensis – digital project will see the digitisation of the abbey’s codices. In addition, scientific descriptions detailing the origin, owners, appearance, handwriting and content of the library’s manuscripts will be compiled in a project database. For the first time, researchers will have comprehensive and systematic access to the Lorsch manuscripts, a fact that opens up entirely new possibilities of research.<br /><br /><b><a href="http://www.medievalists.net/2012/04/10/medieval-monastic-library-of-lorsch-recreated-online/" target="_blank">Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net</a></b>

Medieval Monastic Library of Lorsch recreated online

The unique holdings of the medieval monastic library of Lorsch, currently scattered over 68 libraries worldwide, are being re-compiled into ...

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