Digitising the British Library’s collection of Hebrew manuscripts: Challenges and insights

Abstract

The British Library’s collection of Hebrew manuscripts is one of the most significant in the world. Funded by The Polonsky Foundation, the Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project has been digitising 1,250 manuscripts since 2013, in line with the Library’s commitment to digitisation and opening up access to its collections. The main aim of this paper is to describe the project’s digitisation experiences and challenges. By building digital scholarship and engagement directly into the workflow of this project it has been possible to create new interactions and opportunities to this unique and significant collection.