Projects

The Greek Manuscripts Digitisation Project undertook to make high-resolution digital images of the majority of the British Library's Greek manuscripts freely available online.

Published date:

28 May 2015

The project was funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, as well as by the A. G. Leventis Foundation, Sam Fogg, the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation, the Thriplow Charitable Trust, and the Friends of the British Library.

Following the success of the Codex Sinaiticus Project, the British Library turned its attention to its substantial collection of Greek manuscripts (just over 1,000 in total). An initial phase saw funding provided for the conservation, cataloguing, and digitisation of some 287 manuscripts. A second phase extended this to cover another 261 Greek manuscripts, while a third and final phase covered the digitisation of an additional 346 manuscripts, bringing the total number of digitised Greek manuscripts to 894. The third phase also funded the employment of a full-time Curator of Classical and Byzantine Studies to oversee the completion of the Digitisation Project and the promotion of the Greek collections.

At the completion of the project the vast majority of the Library's Greek manuscripts have been digitised, including almost all the pre-1600 manuscripts, save for a few which could not be imaged for conservation reasons. In addition, a number of modern scholarly papers, or items which contain only a few short leaves or extracts in Greek, were excluded from the project, as were items partially in Greek held in the Library’s Asian and African Collections.

Further details about the British Library's Greek manuscripts can be found on the Greek manuscripts collection page.