Started in 2010, this massive digitization project of the Vatican Library aims to scan the entire library’s collection of manuscripts (80,000 codices), as well as other materials such as incunabula. The Vatican Library’s collection include a number of manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.

In August 2016, 5267 manuscripts and 658 incunabula were accessible on DigiVatLib:

As explained on the “About” page, “DigiVatLib is based on the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) technology, making digital materials easily accessible and usable.”

The DigiVatLib book reader not only allows users to zoom, browse and ‘turn pages’, but also to compare digital objects from different IIIF repositories of other digital libraries. It is possible to search, and discovery the digital collections using the simple and advanced search features. The guided navigation (‘faceted search’) relies on metadata elements to refine queries. The next release of DigiVatLib will include enhanced search functions,  digital galleries, and a news section.

The interface is available in English, Italian and Japanese.