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Is anybody here an "expert" on the Vatican Library? Freepmail me, please. -Jeff

Japanese Tech Firm NTT Is Scanning the Ancient Texts in the Vatican Apostolic Library Almost 600 years after Pope Nicholas V founded the Vatican Apostolic Library, the Holy See is now turning to 50 experts, five scanners and a Japanese IT firm to digitize millions of pages from its priceless manuscripts, opening them to the broader public for the first time. When the project is finished, one of the richest and most important collections of historical texts in the world will be available with a click of the mouse—and free. The plan marks a revolution for an institution known as...

Thousands of rare manuscripts until now accessible only to scholars at the Vatican will go online over the next four years, thanks to help from a Japanese information technology company. Officials of NTT DATA Corporation and the Vatican Library announced their joint project at a news conference March 20. The library, founded by Pope Nicholas V in the 15th century, preserves some 82,000 manuscripts dating back to the early centuries of Christianity. Among its treasures are an illustrated edition of the works of the Roman poet Virgil, produced around the year 400, and illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy by the...

The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) said on Thursday they intended to digitize 1.5 million pages of ancient texts and make them freely available online. The libraries said the digitized collections will centre on three subject areas: Greek manuscripts, 15th-century printed books and Hebrew manuscripts and early printed books. The areas have been chosen for the strength of the collections in both libraries and their importance for scholarship in their respective fields... The initiative has been made possible by a 2 million pound ($3.17 million) award from the Polonsky Foundation. "The service...

<p>VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Access to the Gutenberg Bible and other ancient manuscripts has just gotten easier.</p> <p>The Vatican Library and Oxford University's Bodleian Library put the first of 1.5 million pages of their precious manuscripts online Tuesday, bringing their collections to a global audience for the first time.</p>

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

(Vatican Radio) More than six centuries after it was founded by Pope Nicholas V, the Vatican Library announced this week that it has made a first selection of ancient manuscripts available for consultation online. The first 256 documents to be digitalised form part of a broader project to make a large section of this prestigious archive freely available to students, scholars, researchers and teachers. The library, founded in 1451, has been supported in this work of digitalisation by a £2 million grant from the Polonsky Foundation and other sponsors. Speaking to Vatican Radio on Wednesday, the prefect of the Vatican...

One of the Bodleian's newly digitized ancient texts is a manuscript from Venice dating from 1478. A collaboration between the Bodleian and the Vatican Libraries will bring ancient texts into the digital era. 1.5 million pages from both collections will be digitized and made publicly available. The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) and the Bodleian Libraries will embark on a new collaborative digitization project with the aim of opening up repositories of ancient texts and making a selection of their remarkable treasures freely available online to researchers and the general public worldwide. The initiative has been made possible by a...

Pave the Way Foundation Proposal ApprovedVATICAN CITY, FEB. 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See is planning to publish on the Internet, free of charge, several documents from the Vatican Secret Archives in relation to World War II. The initiatives is partially in response to a petition from Pave the Way Foundation, an organization dedicated to bridging gaps between religions. The foundation proposed making digital files of, and later publicizing, some 5125 descriptions and copies of documents from the closed section of the Vatican archives, from the period of March 1939 to May 1945. Gary Krupp, the foundation's president and founder,...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Latin is online at the Vatican. Without fanfare, the Vatican's www.vatican.va site has made hundreds of papal and other documents available in a new Latin-language section. The Latin area went live May 9. Visitors clicking on "Sancta Sedes" (Latin for "Holy See") are taken to a menu of documents arranged by pontificate or Roman Curia office. Also posted is the complete neo-Vulgate Latin version of the Bible and Latin editions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Code of Canon Law and the documents of the Second Vatican Council. The papal pages -- "Summi Pontifices"...

Little things slow down the process of putting 40 million pages of ancient manuscripts in the Vatican Library online: gold or silver in the illuminations, bindings that disintegrate if you open them, getting the synergy right. “It is important to realize if there is gold or silver in a manuscript. That requires a very particular process because the light will be different,” said Luciano Ammenti, who is in charge of IT at the Vatican and the project to digitize the storied library’s 82,000 manuscripts. The project, finally up and running a year after its announcement, uses an armada of equipment...

The Vatican Library is losing its walls. Its 89,000 historic manuscripts are being made available online for access by scholars world-wide courtesy of EMC. The library, properly known as the Vatican Apostolic Library, is located in the Vatican City and is one of the oldest libraries in the world, established formally in 1475 but thought to have functioned for a long time before that. The library's function is to be a resource for scholars researching history, law, philosophy, science and theology.The Abyss of Hell by Sandro Botticelli in the Vatican Library It stores some 89,000 manuscripts, including 8,900 incunabula, manuscripts...

CBS News) Only the pope can borrow from the Vatican Library; it's not open to the public because it's chock full of some of the oldest, one-of-a-kind cultural treasures known to man, including 2,000-yr.old copies of the gospels of Luke and John. But Morley Safer and "60Minutes" got an all-access pass this Sunday, April 10 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. From the works of Michelangelo and Galileo to the priceless personal baubles commissioned by popes and princes 600 years ago, get ready to ooh and ah. The library, in a way, has become the attic of Western civilization. "Nobody knows what's...