HMML is the world’s leader in the creation and preservation of manuscript images, and has archived images of more than 30 million manuscript pages, making us the largest single 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 owners to retain custody of manuscript originals.
• The preservation benefit of having photographic “back-ups” of originals.
• The benefit to scholars of having a “library of libraries,” putting in one place the manuscript resources of libraries that may be scattered across hundreds or even thousands of miles.

The founding focus of HMML in the 1960s was to preserve western monastic manuscripts along the fault lines of the Cold War, starting in 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 expanded its focus in 2003 to include the preservation of manuscripts in other eastern Christian traditions. The importance of eastern Christian culture to Christian and world history, and the conditions of instability in many of the historic regions of eastern Christianity lay behind this broadening of HMML’s focus.

With the launch of the eastern Christian project, HMML also changed from microfilm to digital preservation. Digital preservation, with its use of high-resolution color imaging, preserves more information than black and white microfilm, increasing the value of manuscript images to scholars. Digital media are 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, HMML now maintains, or has already completed, digital preservation projects in Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Ethiopia, India, Italy and Malta.