
The Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library - taylorbuley
http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/
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ygmelnikova
The number one comment is a joke about how worthless the site is?

One of the scrolls says "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in
revealing his own mind."

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WalterBright
The last episode of "60 Minutes" included a segment on the Vatican library,
with its millions of unique and irreplaceable books. It's just too awful to
contemplate the loss if the building were lost in some disaster.

Why isn't there a program to digitize all of it? Sure, it'll take decades, but
every treasure digitized is one that won't be lost. It doesn't have to be
imaged with the finest scanners available, even just a cheap digital camera is
enough to record the information for posterity. And, it's the information that
matters, not the physical books.

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shmerl
I'm not sure if they are working on it, but for example many Hebrew
manuscripts in Vatican ([http://www.scribd.com/doc/27128629/Hebrew-
Manuscripts-in-the...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/27128629/Hebrew-Manuscripts-
in-the-Vatican-Library) ) became available as microfilms for the Institute of
Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts (<http://jnul.huji.ac.il/imhm/>)

At least some part of them were going to be digitized (see
[http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/library/news/Pages/d...](http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/library/news/Pages/dig-
heb-manus-catalog.aspx) ).

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tzury
This project is fully backed by Google.

Google seems to invest a lot in preserving and digitizing our history and we
must thanks them for that.

Perhaps it is part of their mission of "Organizing the world 's knowledge"

See more projects at <http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/#!home:page=1>

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weedow
Israel Antiquities Authority? +1

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smackfu
Step 1: Learn to read Greek.

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hahla
They have a few featured ones that have been translated into English. Either
way I find this incredible, to think these ancient scrolls will be stored
digitally forever into the future.

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DigitalJack
While I think this is very cool, what makes you think the digital realm will
last longer than the physical scrolls?

Just recently it was considered major digital archaeology when Jordan Mechner
went on his expedition to recover the source of Prince of Persia. That was
only 25-30 years old.

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elemeno
For as long as they're useful to academics who want to study the Dead Sea
Scrolls or as long as they're considered a valuable cultural artefact, they'll
be converted to whatever new formats become used. The same applies, pretty
much, to the actual Dead Sea Scrolls as well - as long as people want them to
continue existing, they'll be preserved, but without being actively looked
after, they're likely to decay as well.

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jpxxx
What a worthless site. I searched for "gun", "homeschooling" and "gay
marriage" but nothing came up.

