Saturday, December 26, 2015

Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project

THE BRITISH LIBRARY: Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project. The Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project has been digitising items from the British Library's significant collection of Hebrew hand-written books, charters and scrolls, in order to make them available online.
Coming towards the end of this phase of our project, we have almost finalised the digitisation of 1,255 manuscripts selected for this phase, with the total of approximately 430,000 digitised images. These are mainly manuscripts catalogued and published by George Margoliouth at the end of the 19th century, but some of these have never been published. At this point, several manuscripts still await more thorough conservation treatments. In addition, four of our Torah scrolls included textile covers (mantles), made of silk brocade and linen. These are undergoing conservation treatment by a textile conservator prior to imaging.

So far, 748 digitised manuscripts have been uploaded and can be viewed on the Library’s Digitised Manuscripts site, and the remainder is expected to be fully accessible by the end of June 2016.
Background on the project, which is also associated with the Israel National Library, is here. For many other manuscript digitization projects, go here and just keep following the links.