The University of Oxford and the Vatican announced a plan to collaborate in digitizing about 1.5 million pages of rare to found ancient text, dating from the 16th century or even earlier to that. The project is going to be funded from the Polonsky Foundation – a charitable organization that supports higher education, medical research, and other general matters in the arts and sciences – and is expected to span about 4 years and was made possible by a donation of £2 million (approximately $3.1 million).
“With approximately two-thirds of the material coming from the BAV and the remainder from the Bodleian, the digitization effort will also benefit scholars by uniting virtually materials that have been dispersed between the two collections over the centuries,” a statement from Oxford read. The aim of the project, as envisioned by the Polonsky Foundation is “to democratize access to information, [seeing] increasing digital access to these two library collections, among the greatest in the world, as a significant step in sharing the wealth of resources on a global scale.”