The Vatican’s Library is one of the oldest, largest and most precious in the world – and now it is swiftly becoming one of the most digital, thanks to the work of NTT DATA and it’s AMLAD system.
Digitizing archives is far from a rare solution these days, but the demands of the Vatican library proved more daunting than the average street-corner office. Precious scrolls, ancient documents, vellum needing utmost care, and other tricky factors made the project seem nearly impossible until last year in March, when the Vatican reached a deal with IT solutions corporation NTT DATA.
NTT DATA knew what they were getting into before agreeing to the contract: More than 3,000 documents that needed careful scanning and digitization, a project that would span four years and 1.5 million pages, and a collaboration worth $22.6 million.
Now, a year later, the project is roaring along. NTT is using its in-house digitizing solution called AMLAD. The first steps of the process are familiar: Using large, extra high-def scanners, the pages are carefully converted to data and previewed. Then AMLAD makes the data viewable through a variety of different devices, including not only desktop computers but also tablets and mobile devices.
So far, the project has increased the number of digitally viewable Vatican documents to 4,000 in total. Even when the project is finished in 2018, it will only represent a fraction of the Vatican’s total documents, currently curated by the suitably Latinized organization Digita Vaticana. It includes pre-Columbian Aztec manuscripts, watercolors of ancient Japanese dances, fragments of some of the first Korans ever written, original illustrations for the Divine Comedy, and so on.
You can appease your inner Dan Brown and check out the HD archives here (note, alas, the lack of full Chrome support) or watch the video below for a full description of the process. If nothing else, the illuminations are impressive, and the tablet support is no doubt welcome for historical researches. FYI: The Vatican has 82,000 manuscripts, 100,000 prints, 150,000 photographs and much more, so in theory there’s enough work to keep NTT DATA busy for a very, very long time if this first contract is a success.
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