An Innovative Collaboration Preserves Key Islamic Materials and Makes Them Accessible to Internet Users Everywhere
Through a new collaboration among Islamic-studies scholars, librarians, and curators, Harvard University has cataloged, conserved, and digitized Islamic manuscripts, maps, and published texts from its renowned library and museum collections. The result is a new online collection comprising more than 145,000 digital pages available to Internet users everywhere. Entitled the Islamic Heritage Project, or IHP, the collection is made possible with generous support from Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal.
Visit IHP online at http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ihp.
The Islamic Heritage Project is an integral part of the University's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program (ISP). Founded in 2006, ISP builds on Harvard's strong commitment to the study of the religious traditions of the world, and it augments the University's existing strength by increasing the number of faculty focused on Islamic studies. ISP created the Islamic Heritage Project in collaboration with the Harvard University Library Open Collections Program (OCP) to share important aspects of the University's intellectual wealth—specifically by developing a dynamic digital collection that supports teaching and research.
The IHP collaboration is a unique initiative that identifies, preserves, and digitizes historically significant Islamic materials and makes the resulting images available on the Internet. IHP includes over 260 manuscripts, 270 printed texts, and 50 maps selected by Harvard's distinguished faculty in consultation with bibliographers, librarians, and museum curators. On a case-by-case basis, every item was reviewed and cataloged—and, in many cases given careful conservation treatment—by conservators in the University Library's Weissman Preservation Center.
To create the online collection itself, the OCP project team produced digital copies of more than 145,000 pages that are now web-accessible."Through the generosity of Prince Alwaleed," notes William A. Graham, Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, "Harvard is actively sharing parts of its rich library holdings for the benefit of the worldwide community of scholars of Islam. With the Islamic Heritage Project now launched, any Internet user can locate often unique primary and secondary resources in Harvard collections, access them on the web, and incorporate them into teaching and research."
Today, IHP users can search or browse complete reproductions of Islamic manuscripts and published texts that date from the 13th to the 20th centuries CE and represent many
· regions, including Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and South, Southeast, and Central Asia;
· languages, primarily Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish; also Urdu, Chagatai, Malay, Gujarati, Indic languages, and several Western languages; and
· subjects, including religious texts and commentaries, Sufism, history, geography, law, and the sciences (astronomy, astrology, mathematics, medicine); poetry and literature; rhetoric, logic, and philosophy; calligraphy, dictionaries and grammar, as well as biographies and autobiographical works.
Users can browse three basic genres—published materials, manuscripts, and maps—or search catalog records that detail the full IHP collection. A virtual keyboard allows users to enter queries and search terms in Arabic.
See http://hul.harvard.edu/news/2009_1218.html for full announcement.
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