The Vatican Library and Oxford University’s Bodleian Library on Tuesday put the first of 1.5 million pages of their precious manuscripts online.
The two libraries in 2012 announced a four-year project to digitize some of the most important works in their collections of Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts and early printed books.
The 2 million pound ($3.3 million) project is being funded by the Polonsky Foundation, which aims to democratize access to information.
“We want everyone who can to see these manuscripts, these great works of humanity,” Monsignor Cesare Pasini, the prefect of the Vatican Library, told The Associated Press. “And we want to conserve them.”
Among the first works up on the site Tuesday, at http:/bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk are the two-volume Gutenberg Bibles from each of the libraries, the first-ever books set on type-face in the mid-1400s by printer Johannes Gutenberg in Germany, heralding the age of the printed book in the West.
The online collection also includes an illustrated 11th century Greek bible and a beautiful 15th-century German bible, hand-colored and illustrated by woodcuts.
Sources
AP/CBC News
ABC News
BBC
Image: Bodleian Libraries/University of Oxford/CBC News