The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 45, November 10, 2002, Article 10

VATICAN COLLECTIONS GOING ONLINE

  Dick Johnson pointed out the following article, published in
  Vatican City on October 29, 2002.  It mentions the
  Vatican Numismatic Library and a catalog of 300,000
  coins in the Vatican collection.

  "The Vatican Apostolic Library is in the process of posting
  hundreds of thousands of historical manuscripts, previously
  accessible to a privileged few, on its Web page."

  "Manuscripts of Emperor Justinian, love letters of King Henry
  VIII to Anne Boleyn, and missives of Lucrezia Borgia to her
  father, who had become Pope Alexander VI -- all may be
  consulted at www.vatican.va."

  "Father Raffaele Farina, prefect of the library, talked about
  the new features of the library's computer system.  He
  explained that since 2000, projects have been under way to
  digitize and catalogue descriptions of the graphic material
  (prints, illustrations and drawings) of the Print Library and
  the numismatic material (coins and medals) of the Numismatic
  Library.

  In addition, he said, the database offers a public catalogue
  which contains descriptions of books and magazines, prints,
  illustrations, drawings, copper engravings, photographs, coins
  and medals and even musical scores, recordings and CDs,
  for a total of 700,000 bibliographic entries."

  "The Vatican Apostolic Library, founded by Pope Nicholas V
  (1447-1455), is specialized in humanistic areas (paleography,
  history, art history, classics, philology) and has 1.6 million
  ancient and modern printed volumes;  83,000 incunabula
  (editions printed from the invention of the press to the start of
  the 16th century), 150,000 manuscripts and archive volumes;
  300,000 coins and medals, and more than 100,000 prints.

  To give an idea of the quantity of the bibliographic material
  in the Apostolic Library, Cardinal Mejía said the shelves to
  store it would stretch about 90 kilometers (55 miles)."

  http://www.mirifica.net/wmview.php?ArtID=280

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

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