Digitization Manuscripts

The Project of digitising Islamic manuscripts of Indonesian pondok pesantren (MIPES) which I do in three places in East Java : Tuban, Lamongan and Ponorogo represent effort to save heritage of nation which very worth. Though many people -- especially which is manuscript owner -- unconscious for the importance of manuscript for the materials of science study especially in the field of philology science.
The Muslim ummah and their Islamic civilization has been a major contributor to worlds knowledge in a variety of fields and specializations particularly in science, arts, architecture, mathematic and medicine. It has been recognized that Islamic manuscripts form one of the great intellectual and artistic patrimonies of mankind. Their importance has been recognized not only in the muslim but also in Europe and America where private and public institutions have been collecting them for at least four centuries. Heritage institutions and academic libraries in the west such as in the british library and oxford Bodleian library in united kingdom, national library of the Netherlands, the royal library of Belgium, and the library of congress, united states are vigorously enriching their library collections with these information in order to understand, preserve and capture the history, technology, social science, politics, and the thinking of the time. In fact Islamic manuscript collections form the precious and important holdings of the heritage institutions of these nation.

What is digitization? Digitization as mentioned above, has become one of the key activities in libraries and leads us to understand that it is mainly the purpose producing numerous large digital collections and materials and databases which are open to exploration and presentation of different directions. Digitization of heritage material such as old manuscripts now not only focus on creating large amounts of digital content and providing some fairly simple access tool to material but to learning materials, to the need to package RAW content for collections up in various ways such as learning experiences and curated exhibition or interpretation or analysis.

Why to digitize? Digitization or digital technology helps achieve institutional goals, whether highlighting particular aspects of local history or reaching a national or international audience. Collections that were once too remote to be viewed are now accessible, objects that were once too fragile to be handled or exhibited can now be seen by broad audiences. By making it possible to bring together diverse materials or collections from scattered locations for comparison and research, digital technology can be a powerful teaching aid. Digital technology can also make available powerful teaching materials for student who would not otherwise have access to them. Among the most valuable types of materials to digitize from a classroom perspective are those from the special collections of research institution, including rare books, manuscripts, musical scores and performances, photographs and graphic materials, and moving images. Often these items are extremely rare, fragile, or, in fact, unique and gaining access to them is very difficult.

Why digitize manuscript? Manuscript literally means “handwritten” it designates a book or treatise written by hand,that is, not printed by means of a printing press. There are several reason for choosing digitization manuscripts : Manuscript are often fragile, oversize, or otherwise in need of particular care, and as unique items they are irreplaceable, so that replacing their use with the use of some digital surrogate helps with preservation. It can also become much faster to look at them digitally than to browse materials which must be handled slowly and carefully to avoid deterioration. Typically, manuscripts are unique sources of information.