The Vatican Library to digitize its archives
The digitization of the Vatican Library’s manuscripts will accelerate thanks to the agreement signed at the Vatican with the Japanese company NTT Data, on March 20, 2014. Bishop Cesare Pasini, prefect of the Apostolic Library of the Vatican, added that 6,800 works have already been digitized, and that some are available on the library’s website. But this agreement, in a preliminary 4-year phase, will allow 3,000 more manuscripts to be scanned and archived with the help of high-precision material by a team of about thirty people. In the end, the Vatican Library aims at digitally archiving 82,000 manuscripts that will then be made available on its website, in order to allow researchers to work without having to travel to the originals.
The cost of the NTT Data project is estimated at about 18 million euros and should be partially covered by a donations campaign. The Japanese company, whose reputation will benefit from this partnership with the Vatican, will offer the services of several of its specialists free of charge.
The Apostolic Library of the Vatican is one of the oldest libraries in the world, having been opened to the public in the middle of the 15th century by Pope Nicolas V (1447-1455), and then institutionalized in 1475 by Sixtus IV (1471-1484). It has nearly 1.6 million ancient and modern works, 8,300 of which were printed in the period between the beginning of printing in the Western world, around 1450, and the end of the first century of typography, before 1501. Its inventory includes several dozen parchments, over 150,000 manuscripts and archived documents, 100,000 printed documents and incisions, 300,000 coins and medallions and 20,000 works of art.
(sources: apic/imedia/vis – DICI no.295 dated April 4, 2014)
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