Dr Leonard Polonsky gives £1.5m for Cambridge University Library to start a Digital Library: “The Foundations of Faith” and “The Foundations of Science”
Earlier in the week I noticed this from the Telegraph:
Thousands of rare books and manuscripts at Cambridge University Library – including handwritten notes by Sir Isaac Newton – are to be made available on line thanks to a £1.5m donation.
The gift from the former businessman Dr Leonard Polonsky will be used to start the Digital Library for the 21st Century create an infrastructure capable of digitising the vast collection housed at the 600-year-old institution.
Digitisation will be completed in stages, with the first collections to be called “The Foundations of Faith” and “The Foundations of Science”.
Although this piqued my interest, I left off blogging about it, as I really didn’t understand the significance or importance of this, and wanted to await comments from Roger Pearse. Roger is very knowledgeable on both Antiquity and Patristics, and frequently embarks on translation work for Internet consumption. This is what he had to say:
Cambridge University Library is going to put Codex Bezae online, or so I read in a Daily Telegraph story. Better still, they’re preparing to put all their books online, and make them freely available. That’s what we want to hear.
Anne Jarvis, the university Librarian, said that the exciting new plans would open up priceless collections to students worldwide.
She said: “Our library contains evidence of some of the greatest ideas and discoveries over two millennia.
“We want to make it accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world with an internet connection and a thirst for knowledge.
Good for them! Codex Bezae will be in the first tranche, as — at little pointlessly — will be a Gutenberg bible.
I hope they attract lots of funding. This will be the first UK library to take mass free access seriously, and if they do it, will probably guarantee the existence of the library into the digital age.
Dan Wallace and the chaps at CSNTM who photograph manuscripts of the bible were in Cambridge trying to negotiate access. I suspect their efforts — seemingly fruitless at the time — probably helped change minds and create expectations at CUL.
Tags: Internet & Technology, Religion Society, Theology Doctrine Philosophy
June 5th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
Sure I read some time ago that there was an islamic agenda in this project this is not a new story.
The irony Newton was no fan of islam.
June 7th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Stuart – I’m managing this project for Cambridge University Library. I’ve added a comment to Roger’s blog entry with some further information/clarification – see http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=4445. I think ‘Goy’ (above) may be referring to another project we’re undertaking within the library (to create an online catalogue of our Islamic manuscripts), but we’ll certainly be including some important Islamic and Jewish materials within the new digital library.
June 7th, 2010 at 11:58 am
@Grant, thanks so much for taking the time to comment and clarify for us. It sounds like a thoroughly exciting prject,
June 8th, 2010 at 3:30 am
The criticism as I recall it was from a mainstream TV broadcast the contention being from some academics that the islamic materials were being given preference way beyond there importance making the digitization more of a political correct value than of academic value and that this was taken up most of the funding, meaning that the more important materials would not be digitised.
To keep within time and budget Oxford will concentrate on its Arabic manuscript collection (some 5,000 records).
June 8th, 2010 at 8:19 am
I’m not aware of this debate which sounds as if it may have be misinformed. The joint Oxford Cambridge project is funded from an external funding call which had the specific aims of providing better support for Islamic Studies. Although it has been classified as a digitisation project, the small grant we received is not being used to digitise the manuscripts themselves but rather to digtiise the catalogue records, which currently exist in a variety of incomplete and inconsistent printed and handwritten formats that make these collections very difficult to access. As this is externally funded, resources have not been diverted from our other priority projects/collections to achieve this. If there are other parts of our collection you would like to see catalogued or digitised or you can identify funding sources, please contact me directly at gy219@cam.ac.uk