Islamic manuscripts to be made available online

Firestone Curator of Manuscripts Don Skemer has organized an effort to digitize about 200 Islamic manuscripts and electronically catalog more than 10,000 Islamic manuscripts in the Rare Book Division's collection during the next four years.

The collection, the largest in North America, ranges in age from the earliest Islamic texts in the ninth century to pieces written in the early 20th century during the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

"When I first arrived in the early '90s, I realized there were many manuscripts that had not been catalogued," Skemer said. "The first cataloguing was nearly 100 years ago in 1906."

Though there have been several updates since then, according to Skemer, the catalog "still needs a lot of work."

By February, Skemer will hire two specialists to begin the online cataloging. He has also committed a professional digital photography unit to digitize the selected works. While the electronic catalogues will appear online as they are completed, Skemer expects the digitized parts will not be online before 2008.

"It's a long process," Skemer said. "The photography alone will take eight months, and it requires programming and online implementation to make the manuscripts accessible."

Before the digitization begins, a panel of three professors already chosen from the Program in Near Eastern Studies will recommend a list of manuscripts to Near Eastern Collections Curator James Weinberger, Skemer and the other librarians directing the project.

"Our collection is encyclopedic, so its sample should be equally broad and representative," Skemer said.

Skemer explained that the manuscripts' origins range from South Asia to West Africa, reaching as far north as the Balkans. According to Weinberger, it covers topics from history and literature to law and philosophy.

"It's the largest collection outside of the Middle East," said Director of the Program in Near Eastern Studies Sukru Hanioglu. "There are certain manuscripts you can't find anywhere else in the world. It is a great service for the whole intellectual community."

Funding for this undertaking was granted by The Magic Project, an endowment established by Lynn Shostack in memory of her late husband David Garner '69.

"We thought the manuscripts should be made available to scholars that could not travel to Firestone Library," Shostack said. "They have all these fascinating treasures but no efficient dissemination of them."

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Weinberger believes "the benefit derived from the Project is to bring greater attention to the collection and the University."

"What is extraordinary about this endowment is that there are small corners of the University curriculum not typically recognized by donors. [Shostak] has pointed out these for the Magic Project," said Carol Rigolot, executive director for the Council of the Humanities.

Two-thirds of the current collection was donated in 1942 by Robert Garrett, a member of the Class of 1897, in addition to the manuscripts donated or purchased throughout this century.

"In the average year we may add 20-30 manuscripts," Skemer said. "It's a living and growing collection."