Making a digital library for the future from the manuscripts of the past
On June 15th 1215, Magna Carta was signed in Runnymede. A peace treaty between King John I and the Archbishop of Canterbury, it has long been mythologised as enshrining the rights of the British people, and eight hundred years later, it still looms large in our imagination. Amazingly, four copies still exist — one in Lincoln Cathedral, one in Salisbury Cathedral and two at the British Library.
The experience of seeing this momentous document in the flesh might provide a thrilling sense of history, but what if you can’t make the trip to London? As one of the very first organisations to register a .uk domain, the British Library recognises the importantance of the internet in letting everyone access UK history.
Julian Harrison, the British Library’s Medieval Manuscripts curator, was at the helm of the long journey of getting Magna Carta, and its many related documents, online. His digitisation remit also includes thousands of other medieval manuscripts. “We’re slowly putting everything online,” he says, “We’ve digitised around a thousand manuscripts so far.”
Digitisation is a painstaking operation. To get Magna Carta online, its fragile extant documents have to submit to an exacting process. After being examined and conserved — which, if there’s damage, can add several months of repair work — they are photographed in a state-of-the-art studio. A single flash is all it takes, which doesn’t harm the historic objects. Then the files are sent back to the Library, where metadata is added before they go up online and into our homes.
It’s an ambitious vision that requires significant resources, but it’s one which the Library sees as undeniably worthwhile.
But digitising documents at the British Library doesn’t start and end with its medieval collection. In fact, the first collection to be digitised was its Greek manuscripts — over 600 of them, ranging from 9th century to the 18th century — done with the backing of a philanthropic organisation. The eventual aim is to get many more thousands of items up online, covering all historical eras. It’s an ambitious vision that requires significant resources, but it’s one which the Library sees as undeniably worthwhile.
“In the past, we’d have certain collection items that tended to get overlooked,” says Julian. “As everything goes online, it facilitates new discoveries and avenues of exploration. Having all that at your fingertips makes research a completely new thing.”
All a researcher needs to do is go to the website, where the ever-growing digital collection is instantly available. It’s a bespoke hub, a brave new world of digital access to some of the world’s most amazing literary and cultural heritage. You can sit at home on your laptop and flick through Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks, the draft score of Handel’s ‘Messiah’, the 7th century Lindisfarne Gospel, the only known copy of Beowulf, from the 11th century, and many more.
Is there a downside to having all these resources online? “Some researchers can get pretty blinkered,” says Julian. “Their explorations can start and stop with what’s online, and because that’s not the full collection, they might end up with a narrower vision of what’s really out there.”
Besides, he adds, the brave new world of the web might become an infinite resource, but it won’t tell the truth of every tale. “One of the copies of Magna Carta was in a fire in the 18th century, and it’s partly unreadable. Our imaging scientists can use ultraviolet lights and filters to see if there’s anything traceable under the damage, but sometimes it doesn’t work, and a document like that can’t go online. It’s important to acknowledge the layers of context that have accreted, but this won’t always come through on the web.”
And occasionally, some things must remain a mystery — in certain cases, the web is no panacea. “There’s an inscription on the back of one of the copies of Magna Carta that’s long been obliterated,” says Julian. “Nowadays we have a lot of techniques to recover what’s been lost, but sometimes you can’t get everything back.”
While fragments here and there have been inexorably swallowed up by history, the British Library’s archive more than makes up for it, with its unrivalled range and depth of collections. And as more of it appears online, the more anyone around the world can benefit from it. In steadily going digital, the British Library is blazing a trail in the online world, opening up history for all the world to see.
This story is one of 30 celebrating the launch of .uk domain names in 1985. To read the others visit our 30 Years of .uk hub. To start your own .uk story check out www.agreatplacetobe.uk.
