Digital Archiving of Cultural and Historical Treasure of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Manuscripts Collections

Abstract

The need to keep, protect, organise, but also to have an open access documents, manuscripts, books, and other material testimonies of general and cultural history is becoming ever more prominent. Considering the importance of cultural and historical heritage, this civilisation attempts to build a system that would properly protect and make available anything that has been and is being made to serve scientific, educational and cultural purposes. As a response to different possibilities of destruction, and frustration accompanying the loss of memory of heritage, digital archive – digital repository of images, books, manuscripts, and other documents – comes on the scene.

The fact that during the aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina numerous archives, libraries and manuscript collections have been destroyed, tells us about importance to work on digital storage and protection. In this paper, on the example of the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo, we will show how important is the process of reconstruction of manuscript collections and archives, in addition to traditional methods, scope and application of modern IT technologies.