Digitising the British Library’s Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts: Challenges and Insights

Open Theology, 2019

This article critically examines the functionalities and significance of three prominent digital tools that have become central to the study of Greek New Testament manuscripts. The design, functionalities, and significance of the New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room (NTVMR), the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) digital library, and the Pinakes database have a hand in shaping the research questions of the field. As such, it is important to understand what these tools do, how they function, and how they might develop further to address the needs of the field. The analysis of these tools leads to fundamental questions about using digital representations as proxies for primary sources, challenges for managing the materiality of artefactual and digital objects, the collaborative nature of digital scholarship, and the implicit interpretations of the Greek New Testament tradition inherent in digital workspaces.

2015

The high-quality digitisation of documents of na-tional importance has become a well-known meth-od of conserving them as well as presenting them to an international public via the Internet. The Na-tional Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress (LoC 1995) and the Oxford Digital Li-brary (ODL 2001) are only two of an increasing number of such large-scale projects. These projects gain international resonance when they contain documents of worldwide relevance, such as medi-eval manuscripts and early imprints. In 2000, for instance, the 600th anniversary of Johannes Gu-tenberg, the inventor of letterpress printing, was honoured by ”Gutenberg Digital”, an ambitious

The process for the digitization of manuscripts in the Vatican Library, 2024

Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, 2013

IS&T Conference

Book Conservation and Digitization: The Challenges of Dialogue and Collaboration, 2020

The successful transmediation of books and documents through digitization requires the synergetic partnership of many professional figures, that have what may sometimes appear as contrasting goals at heart. On one side, there are those who look after the physical objects and strive to preserve them for future generations, and on the other those involved in the digitization of the objects, the information that they contain, and the management of the digital data. These complementary activities are generally considered as separate and when the current literature addresses both fields, it does so strictly within technical reports and guidelines, concentrating on procedures and optimal workflow, standards, and technical metadata. In particular, more often than not, conservation is presented as ancillary to digitization, with the role of the conservator restricted to the preparation of items for scanning, with no input into the digital product, leading to misunderstanding and clashes of interests. Surveying a variety of projects and approaches to the challenging conservation-digitization balance and fostering a dialogue amongst practitioners, this book aims at demonstrating that a dialogue between apparently contrasting fields not only is possible, but it is in fact desirable and fruitful. Only through the synergetic collaboration of all people involved in the digitization process, conservators included, can cultural digital objects that represent more fully the original objects and their materiality be generated, encouraging and enabling new research and widening the horizons of scholarship.

Library and Information Science, 2019

Preservation of library materials, in general, has two main elements, namely preservation in physical form and preservation of the value of information. The process of preservation in physical form is usually done by means of maintenance, care, preservation and repair. While preserving the value of information is done through letter transfer, language transfer and media transfer. Library media transfer is usually done on library materials that are of historical value, ancient manuscripts, rare books or library materials that have fragile physical conditions. However, the process of transferring conventional media by photocopying will usually further damage the physical library material so the library must have a policy of making copies in the form of digital media transfer in order to preserve the library material information. In addition, the transfer of media also has the potential to cause infringement of copyright, but it is important to remember that libraries as public institutions not only provide information services but also have the task of preserving human creations so that the works of copyright can be empowered throughout the ages. In order to preserve the value of information contained in library materials, the library must be able to protect and protect one's copyrights by implementing policies that favor the public interest while respecting the intellectual property rights of individuals and the community. PAGE 16

The Digital Humanities and Islamic and Middle East Studies, ed. Elias Muhanna, 2016

This chapter aims to shed light on the state of digitization projects that have been undertaken or are in the planning stages in manuscript libraries in Egypt, specifically, the Egyptian National Library, where many different manuscripts projects have already taken place, Central Library of Islamic Manuscripts known as “Awqaf Library,” the Bibliotheca Alexandria, and the Library of al-Azhar, known as al-Azhar online project. The challenges faced by the respective projects teams will be discussed with a particular focus on the administrative and technical aspects. In addition, this chapter determines to what extent the infrastructure and the sufficient budgeting to implement a digitization projects is available.