DIGITIZING ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST BOOKS

Anne E. Bentley, Curator of Art & Artifacts at the Massachusetts Historical Society writes:

The 1660 Klencke Atlas is among the world’s biggest books, measuring nearly six feet by seven and a half feet when open. So when the British Library digitized the towering tome, it required several people to maneuver it to a platform for its high-resolution photographs.

“We digitized the atlas in order to increase access to the 41 maps which are contained in it, which are extremely rare — some known in only three surviving copies — but not terribly well known,” Tom Harper, lead curator of antiquarian maps at the library, told Hyperallergic. “Obviously the atlas is rather a tricky thing to read — though it has wheels fixed onto it to make it easier to move around! Making the maps available free online enables researchers to study these miracles of Dutch cartography and increase our knowledge of the High Renaissance and beginnings of the scientific revolution in the 17th century.”

“The Klencke Atlas is the British Library map collection’s jewel in the crown,” Harper stated. “It was made for Charles II and presented to him in celebration of his restoration to the throne of England — in May 1660, following the English Civil War and Commonwealth. It was presented by the Dutch sugar merchant Johannes Klencke who possibly hoped to win trading concessions in England; there’s a map of the Dutch colony in Brazil in the atlas, where the sugar plantations were based.”

In 2010, the Klencke Atlas went on public view at the London library for the first time in 350 years, and now its digitized pages are available for the public to freely explore, no heavy lifting necessary.

To read the complete article, see:
Watch the British Library Digitize One of the World’s Largest Books (https://hyperallergic.com/375669/watch-the-british-library-digitize-one-of-the-worlds-largest-books/)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
THE DEPULVERA BOOK CLEANING MACHINE (www.coinbooks.org/v20/esylum_v20n18a31.html)

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