Walters putting Islamic collection online
We had a story in the newspaper Thursday about a project to digitze the Islamic manuscript collection at the Walters Art Museum and upload it to the World Wide Web, where documents dating back to the ninth century may be seen free of charge by anyone with an Internet connection.
Art historians at the Smithsonian and the British Museum praised the project, which they say puts the Walters at the forefront of a movement to increase online access to such holdings. they are hoping for an explosion in scholarship, as professionals, amateurs and students pore over the richly illuminated Qurans and lavishly illustrated volumes of poetry and history.
