The Greek Manuscripts Digitisation Project

The Greek Manuscripts Digitisation Project, funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, was a pilot project devoted to the full digitisation of 284 Greek manuscripts. The digitised manuscripts, together with summary catalogue descriptions, are now available at the Digitised Manuscripts section of the British Library's website. The project helped us develop policies and workflows, and acquire skills and experience, that can be applied to the mass-digitisation of all the British Library's pre-1600 manuscripts.

Scope

The 250 manuscripts initially selected for this project were chosen because they offered a good range of different types of Greek manuscript and included some notable highlights of the British Library's collection. These manuscripts, all from the Additional Manuscripts collection, were also at the time amongst the least accessible since they had not yet been catalogued to modern standards. The project has created full digital representations of all text-bearing pages of these manuscripts, as well as summary catalogue descriptions, and has made these freely available via the British Library's website.

Upon securing additional funding, the project was able to digitise a further 34 manuscripts from the Harley collection. A representative selection of Harley manuscripts was made, which took into account responses to a general call for suggestions of manuscripts for future prioritisation, posted on the Digitised Manuscripts blog.

Catalogue descriptions

The 250 Additional Manuscripts initially selected for the project were catalogued by Dimitrios Skrekas in collaboration with Charalambos Dendrinos and Scot McKendrick. They were revised by Julian Harrison, with help from Melanie Bourne and Vera Alexandropoulou. The project created summary catalogue descriptions that support electronic searching and resource discovery on the website. The descriptions of the Harley manuscripts included in the project were taken from The British Library's Summary Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts, Volume I (London, 1999).

Preservation and conservation

The project took great care to ensure that the digitisation of the manuscripts had as little physical impact on the items as possible. A detailed risk assessment of the digitisation of the manuscripts was undertaken, led by Roswitha Ketzer and implemented by Flavio Marzo. Each manuscript was assessed before digitisation and checked again after digitisation to monitor its effect on the collection items. The project undertook remedial conservation work on selected manuscripts in advance to prevent further deterioration during digitisation. The British Library's conservation and preservation teams also had an input into the digitisation itself through training in handling, monitoring, advising and the building of book cradles of various sizes.

Digital photography

The project could rely on the experience of its Imaging Studio in the digitisation of the manuscripts to deliver over 100,000 images. The imaging was managed by Andrew Austin and led by Laurence Pordes. Mamiya 645 medium format one-shot cameras were used with a PhaseOne P45+ digital 39MP back. The RAW files were processed using Capture One 5 software and converted to TIFF format. Colour control charts were filmed before and after each manuscript was photographed and the covers were also recorded. IPTC metadata was added to each capture. After capture the RAW files were checked, corrected for exposure, cropped and given the correct filename. They were then processed and uploaded to the dedicated server.

Delivery and usability

The delivery system for the project was developed by Paul Jones, who managed the technical development, Ken Tsang and Ian Stewart. As an interim solution, the British Library's Themed Collection architecture was used and integrated with Microsoft's Seadragon Ajax image viewer. In anticipation of migrating the project's datasets to the Library's longer-term delivery system in the future, all data was created according to supported schemas and formats. The project also held two workshops with manuscripts and digital research experts to inform future developments of this system.

The images and metadata are made available according to the general British Library's Terms of Use.