More than 20,000 manuscripts, amulets, fragments, about 500,000 archival documents are preserved at the “Matenadaran” Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts. The digitization of manuscripts is imperative of the time, since material cultural values are sooner or later worn out, while new technologies allow preserve the digital images of those values and transmit them to future generations.
One of the main functions of the Digitization Department of the Matenadaran (operating since 2007) is to digitize medieval manuscripts, archival documents, as well as Armenological literature and press collections kept in the library of the Matenadaran.
We have received an offer of an i2S product (Suprascan Quartz A1 scanner) in the scope of a tender, however, we knew about the products of i2S by exploring the market.
The Digitization Department of the Matenadaran has the following products:
• 2 eScan Open System scanners (we use them since January 2016)
• 1 Suprascan Quartz A1 scanner (we use it since December 2013)
• LIMB CAPTURE software for all of our scanners
• quality scanning
• support for large format documents
• automation of post-processing activities by using scanner software
• easy to use scanners and software because of simple user interfaces
With I2S products the Digitization Department of the Matenadaran has already digitized around 1,000,000 pages of medieval manuscripts and archival documents. The majority of the images are scanned in jpg format for giving access to researchers to manuscripts and archives. For publishing purposes, high-quality digital images of manuscript pages having miniatures are scanned in tif format.
Read the testimony of Ara Gasparyan - software engineer at The Matenadaran, responsible for the automation of digitization workflow
"With the i2S products, we get access to high-quality standards for the preservation of original documents. The process of scanning is safe for the brittle parts of a manuscript page or an archival document. The working of the book cradle and the glass plate is designed so that it does not inflict any physical damage to the scanned object. The LIMB CAPTURE software makes scanner calibration and the post-processing operations very accessible by paving a way for painless integration of the scanners into our existing ecosystem of document digitization. The Suprascan Quartz A1 is capable of scanning glossy or non-flat bindings of manuscripts by using the lightning modes of the scanner. In particular, the "Glare Control" mode comes especially handy for controlling reflection from the surface. Last, but not least, the support team of i2S was very responsive and helped us to explore various features of the product.”
