Brought to to life: above: part of Paolo Giovio's
Vitae illustrium vivorum (1549-57), one of 1.5 million
pages from manuscripts, early texts and Bibles, from collections
currently being digitised through a collaboration between the
Bodleian and Vatican Libraries. Portions of the Libraries'
collections of Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts, and early
printed books were selected for digitisation by a team of scholars
and curators from around the world, on grounds of both scholarly
and practical concerns. Conservation staff also worked with
curators to assess the significance of the content and the physical
condition of the items. Below: Msgr Cesare Pasini, prefect
of the Vatican Apostolic Library, shows a digitalised book from the
Apostolic Library at the Vatican, on Tuesday. The Archbishop of
Canterbury said in a video interview on Tuesday that the
digitisation project was "profoundly inspirational", and would give
people the chance to be inspired by the texts. "Where you can see
these ancient texts, there is just a lifting of the spirit, of
something that inspires worship. By being able to have access to
them via a digitised collection, this really opens the text to a
far wider range of scholars than have been able to get at them in
the past, and is of huge international significance as a result",
he said. Archbishop Welby compared the scanning of biblical texts
to the spread of the printing press, which, he said, had a
"profound impact" on religious practice and on wider society.
http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk