Part of Princeton's rare Islamic texts collection to go online

[PsychoDad]

Part of Princeton's rare Islamic texts collection to go online

By WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press Writer
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newjersey/ny-bc-nj--islamicmanuscript1125nov25,0,2027221.story
November 25, 2005, 3:19 PM EST


PRINCETON, N.J. -- When a Muslim cleric or scholar painstakingly wrote down a copy of the holy Quran in the 9th century, he couldn't possibly have imagined how long his work would survive _ or what is about to happen to it.

The ornate Quran, written in lavish ornamental Kufic script on delicate paper, is part of the largest collection of Islamic manuscripts in North America, amassed mostly by a Princeton University alumnus in the late 1800s and given to the university in 1942.
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Now the university is starting a four-year project to categorize the entire collection, and digitize and post online about 200 of the most important works so that scholars around the world can study them.
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The texts to be reproduced online will be photographed by special cameras that will not damage the delicate inks and papers; scanned into large graphic files and eventually posted on the Internet. Overhead digital cameras to be used for the project can photograph only about 4 or 5 pages per hour because of the large size of the files.
The digitized texts will be made available with no strings attached.
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"There are no copyright issues with these," Skemer said. "There are no impediments at all. It's a common heritage, and they will be available to anyone to look at."