Massive computer storage offered for digitized Vatican Library collection

March 07, 2013

The EMC Corporation is making 2.8 petabytes of computer storage space available for the digitized collection of the Vatican Library.

Last year the Vatican Library and the Bodleian libraries at Oxford announced plans to digitize more than 1.5 million items in their collections. The Vatican collection includes more than 80,000 manuscripts, 8,900 incunabula, and 1.1 million printed books. Vatican librarians are anxious to preserve some of the priceless older works in digital form because the originals are subject to deterioration from age and repeated handling.

The storage space provided by EMC will allow for the first steps in a 9-year project to preserve the libraries in digital form. A petabyte is equivalent to 1 million gigabytes, or 1015 bytes.

 

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Further information:

• Vatican Library rings in 2.8 petabytes of storage to digitize its archive of 80,000+ manuscripts (The Next Web)
• Vatican, Oxford libraries will preserve ancient manuscripts in digital form (CWN, 4/11/12)