HMML is the world’s leader in the creation and preservation of manuscript images. Having archived photographs of more than 30 million manuscript pages, HMML is the most substantial resource for manuscript studies in the world.

HMML’s mission of preserving manuscript images is driven by three considerations:

• Respect for the rights of manuscript guardians to retain custody of their original manuscripts.
• The preservation benefit of having photographic “back-ups” of original manuscripts, especially when the originals are endangered by war, political turmoil, or economic instability.
• The benefit to scholars of having a “library of libraries,” gathering together in one collection the manuscript resources of libraries scattered across hundreds or even thousands of miles.

The founding impetus for HMML in the 1960s was to safeguard western monastic manuscript collections in countries on the front line of the Cold War, beginning with Austria. This focus soon grew to include general manuscript collections throughout Europe, and then in Ethiopia as well.

Having become the world’s largest library of manuscript images from both the western and Ethiopian Christian traditions, HMML broadened its focus in 2003 to include manuscripts from the many other eastern Christian traditions: Armenian, Syriac, Christian Arabic, and Slavonic.

With the launch of the eastern Christian project, HMML also moved from microfilm to digital photography. Digital photography, with its high-resolution color imaging, preserves far more information about a manuscript than did black and white microfilm, significantly increasing the usefulness of manuscript images to scholars. Digital imaging is also more cost-effective. Digital technology offers exciting possibilities for innovations in scholarship, including web-based access to manuscripts and the possibility for scholars in multiple locations to work collaboratively on cataloguing projects and other forms of scholarship.

Supported by generous contributions from private donors and foundations, since 2003 HMML has undertaken such digital preservation projects in Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Ethiopia, Italy, Romania, India, Malta, and Ukraine.

Explore HMML's manuscript preservation projects