the Case of the Freeper FRiva Feva is under scrutiny - super-sleuths are welcomed
come resolve the way to yesterday's Target Post, you're not out of the running yet
win your registration fees to the FRive Las Vegas Conference if you dare
Posted on 06/27/2002 12:54:05 PM PDT by chance33_98
Project will put UT's Gutenberg Bible online Effort isn't first of kind but will open doors to research, librarians say
06/27/2002
By JIM VERTUNO / Associated Press
AUSTIN – Johann Gutenberg, welcome to the Internet age.
A rare copy of the Gutenberg Bible, the book that revolutionized printing in Western civilization, is going digital this week at the University of Texas.
Officials say a digital copy being made available on disk and the Internet will make it easier for scholars to conduct research. Anyone will be able to browse the pages of one of the world's most valuable books.
"I hope there will be some really substantive scholarship to come out of this," said Richard Oram, head librarian at the university's Harry Ransom Center, one of the world's top cultural archives.
AP Pete Smith, a photographer at UT's Harry Ransom Center, watches a scanner transfer a facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible before work began Wednesday on the digital copy. Gutenberg printed his famous Bibles in Mainz, Germany, in the 1450s, using what was then a revolutionary printing press. It was the first major Western book printed from movable type. According to the Ransom Center, only about 200 were produced and only 48 copies exist today. The center acquired its two-volume copy in 1978. The Texas Gutenberg isn't the first to go digital. It has already been done in Britain and Japan, and the Library of Congress is working on a similar effort.
But scholars say the Texas effort is important because the university's copy provides valuable information the others do not.
For example, the Texas copy was one of the most-used copies still in existence, said Dr. Paul Needham of Princeton University's Scheide Library. It bears a Jesuit stamp and was used in monasteries in southern Germany as late as the 1760s. It was marked up by monks who scratched out some passages and corrected others.
Other markings indicate which sections were to be read aloud or reserved for church services.
"It really is a remarkable copy," Dr. Needham said. "To study it at your own leisure at your computer desk, you can go to a whole new depth of research like never before without traveling all over the world."
Because the book is so valuable, the Ransom Center keeps it locked away. An armed guard is on hand whenever it is unlocked for scholars, which has happened only twice in the last 12 years. Both times it was for Dr. Needham and for just a few hours.
Ransom Center staff began transferring the 1,200 pages to digital format on Wednesday, with each page taking about seven seconds to scan. IImage Retrieval of Carrollton is providing the technology for free, Mr. Oram said.
The first digital copies will be available on disk or CD-ROM within six months, Mr. Oram said, with Internet access available later.
Similar digital efforts have been very successful. Officials at the British Library said earlier this year that the Web site featuring the library's two copies of the Gutenberg Bible received 1 million hits in its first six months.
Ransom Center Director Thomas Staley expects similar success. "We're going to get more people reading the Bible than you can believe," Mr. Staley said.
They could do it much faster. Remove the pages from the bindings, then get graduate students to feed them into scanners with document feeders. The PDF could be online in a few hours.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.