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Dead Sea Scroll Digitization Project Providing Access

By Cornelius Nunev


The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the best-known and most important historical documents discovered in generations. The historical documents are mainly located in museums in the Middle East. The largest collection of Dead Sea Scrolls has been located in the Israel Museum. The museum has experienced criticism about the limited admittance they supply to the files. Now the Israel Museum has combined with Google to offer electronic admittance to the files.

Job to digitize Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls digitization project has been ongoing within the last few years. There was development of a new camera. This was done so that the photos will not be deteriorated with a special environment while also taking pictures at 1,200 megapixels. There will be photos taken of each scroll and fragment. Then, these pictures will be put in a searchable database after being compiled. The primary goal is to give access to the scrolls to as several people as possible. All of the scrolls should be available online by 2016.

Google partners up with Israel Museum

The Dead Sea Scrolls digitization project is something Google will spend a lot of time with. The site uses the Google Apps motor to run while Google Storage holds all of the scroll photos. The Google team has also made each scanned page a searchable, transcribed document that is indexed in search results. This partnership is similar to Google's Art Job, Prado Museum and Holocaust photo collection.

Scanned versions allow comments

Direct commentary is allowed on the scanned version of the Dead Sea Scrolls which is very unusual. Viewers will be allowed to comment on the specific sections of the Dead Sea Scrolls. What the scientists are finding in the scrolls will be watched carefully by experts. This will allow them to research further the things that could be of interest. This could be especially helpful in deciphering the tens of thousands of scroll document fragments and pieces as they become accessible. Google has said it will help digitize those fragments for any person who wants them to be made available for any person else who has pieces since the Israel Museum does not have them all.




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