Executives at EMC Corp. (NYSE:EMC) may be feeling blessed these days, thanks to a new customer win.
The Hopkinton, Mass. information storage business’s new nine-year project is with no ordinary customer. EMC has been tapped by the Vatican and has been tasked with bringing the Vatican Apostolic Library — one of the oldest libraries in the world — into the digital age.
The company is take more than 80,000 manuscripts and 8,900 Rare Incunabula (a book or pamphlet that was printed — not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe) to be digitally preserved for future generations, according to the company. It’s the Vatican’s goal to preserve the Apostolic Library’s documents and books, which are vulnerable to deterioration and decay from repeated handling, according to the company.
Included in that list is the 42-line Latin Bible of Gutenber, a book that dates back between 1451 and 1455; The Sifra, a Hebrew manuscript that contains one of the oldest extant Hebrew codes; Greek testimoites of the works of Homer, Hippocrates, Sophocles and Plato; and Code-B, one of the old manuscripts of the Greek Bible.
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The initiative, which will result in 40 million pages preserved in a digitized library, is part of EMC’s Information Heritage Initiative and will ensure that the information is made available for future study. EMC’s Information Heritage Initiative is an initiative that works to preserve the world’s information for future generations, making it accessable in digital form. Through its initiative, EMC works with partners to provide the hardware, software, expertise and financial assistance necessary to those who use digital tools to preserve the world’s heritage and make it available via the Internet for research and education.
Past heritage projects include working with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum to digitize millions of documents and images, and thousands of hours of audio and video; JFK Library in Boston to digitize and archive Leondardo da Vinci’s Codex of Flight; and supporting the Herzogin Anna Amalia Library in Germany, which houses a collection of Faust first editions.
“To manage and protect information is part of our mission. The Apostolic Library is one of the oldest libraries in the world and we have a duty to ensure that the knowledge and beauty of the manuscripts in it are available to all in the future,” EMC Italy President Michele Liberato said. “This project will help to preserve and make available a unique heritage of knowledge.”