The Harvard University Library Islamic Heritage Project: Challenges in Managing Large-Scale Digitization of Islamic Manuscripts

The Islamic Heritage Project (IHP) is a collaboration of the Harvard University Library Open Collections Program (OCP) and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University. The project focused upon Islamic manuscripts and rare books and aima at making unique or difficult-to-obtain works freely available and easily accessible worldwide. Author deals with the strategies by which a large-scale project as this one was set up, and by which considerations this project was managed in a sustainable way. The article highlights key decisions pertaining to selection, cataloging, conservation, and imaging specifications for manuscripts, as well as the local infrastructure of systems and services used in the production workflows for this reasonably large-scale project.