The Yemen Manuscript Digitization Initiative

FAIN: HG-50019-10

Princeton University (Princeton, NJ 08540-5228)
David S. Magier (Project Director: October 2009 to March 2014)

An international collaboration between Princeton University and the Freie University, Berlin to preserve three private libraries and create an online resource for their dissemination; the project team will digitize 236 Arabic manuscripts in the fields of Islamic theology and law.

The Yemen Manuscript Digitization Initiative (YMDI) is a collaborative project between Princeton University Library and the Freie Universität Berlin. YMDI's mission is the preservation and dissemination of the Arabic manuscripts in the private libraries of Yemen. Working closely with a Yemeni non-profit organization which has endeavored to save Yemeni manuscripts for the past decade, during the grant period, YMDI will digitally preserve three private libraries in the capital city of Sana'a, a total of 236 manuscripts. These digitized sources will then be virtually conjoined to twelve manuscripts in the rare book collections of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and the Princeton University Library, creating a freely accessible repository of Islamic manuscripts whose scope is unparalleled in the world. This infrastructure maintained at Princeton University Library will be the basis of additional rare manuscripts targeted for preservation by YMDI's advisory board in the coming years.