In a 21st-century version of the age of discovery, teams of computer scientists, conservationists and scholars are fanning out across the globe in a race to digitize crumbling literary treasures.
A digital arms race has been heating up in recent years as companies pour millions into large-scale digitization projects, including Microsoft's effort to scan 80,000 books at the British Library and IBM's multimillion-dollar project to create a virtual version of China's Forbidden City. The Ford Foundation and other organizations are funding a drive to translate and digitize some 700,000 manuscripts in Timbuktu, Mali. The world's oldest functioning monastery, St. Catherine's in Egypt, is digitally photographing its collection of roughly 5,000 scrolls and manuscripts, including the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates to 330 A.D. and is thought to be the oldest Bible in the world.
The article also includes a brief list of some of the digitized materials from:
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