DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS AND RARE PRINTS IN THE CZECH NATIONAL LIBRARY AND THE MANUSCRIPTORIUM PROJECT

摘要

Since the very beginning in 1993, the Albertina icome Prague company has been involved in the digitising programme of the Czech National Library in Prague, with responsibility for digitising their collections of manuscripts and rare prints. Our activities range from the daily digitising to involvement in the development of specialised digitising equipment and software tools, and participation in setting international standards within the UNESCO Memoria Mundi programme. The Manuscriptorium database has been developed as a result of those activities. Currently, it comprises complete digital images of approximately 1,700 important books (over 750,000 images) and a wealth of bibliographic information (over 56,000 records). Apart from the Czech National Library, the database contains data from other Czech and foreign libraries (Slovakia, Poland, Austria, Hungary and Lithuania). Access to everything except the highest quality images is free over the Internet. Z39.50 and OAI-PMH can be used to search the database too. Future development will include the possibility of adding expert opinion to the basic records, thus creating a virtual expert environment. We are very proud that the Czech National Library has been awarded the prestigious UNESCO/Jikji Prize for its activities in the field of digitising.