Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at St. John’s University received $4 million grant from Arcadia Fund to digitally preserve manuscripts.

The executive director of HMML, Father Columba Stewart, says experts travel to Middle East, Africa and India to collect electronic copies of religious and other manuscripts. He adds the threat of the Islamic State in Middle East has added significance to the need of maintaining a copy of manuscripts for future generations. This project began in 2003 with the purpose of preserving endangered manuscripts by archiving them digitally.

Stewart adds the main purpose is to photograph manuscripts and make them available to all users internationally. The grant covers the expense of cataloging materials until 2021 and helps to launch an online reading room in early 2016.

This is a second major grant given by Arcadia to help HMML preserve manuscripts from around the world. HMML has received more than $331 million from Arcadia so far.