The Vatican Library, known as the Bibliotheca Apostolica, is one of the oldest libraries in the world and houses 89,000 historic books, documents, and manuscripts. It is now joining other ambitious preservation efforts in the digital humanities and embarking upon a multi-year project to digitize, store, archive and put the entire collection online.

A self-portrait of William James from his diary and sketchbook, recently digitized by Harvard.

More sneak peeks inside the sketchbooks of famous minds here.

UC Santa Cruz launches extensive digital archive of The Grateful Dead posters, recordings, and other media treats.

“Of the 7,000 languages currently spoken, it is expected that 50% will not survive the turn of the century, and when the last fluent speaker of a language dies, we lose the centuries of knowledge and traditions that have helped shape who we are.”

Google sets out to protect global linguistic diversity in the new Endangered Languages Project. 

(↬ @BBHLabs ᔥ design taxi)

The New York Public Library releases Biblion: Frankenstein for iPad, exploring rare collections of Mary Shelley materials that continue to inspire ideas and storytelling today – a sequel to NYPL’s Biblion: World’s Fair.