>> Eugene Flanagan: Again, good morning to everybody. I'm Eugene Flanagan. I'm director of general and international collections here at the Library of Congress. And on behalf of the Library we'd like to thank you for joining us today in celebration of the Library's Persian Language Rare Materials Digitization Project which was launched on March 20th, the first day of spring and the start of the Persian new year. The Library of Congress, as you probably know, is the world's largest library. And it's my great good fortune to be associated with our international collections which cover most regions of the world and do so across an estimated 470 languages. For many areas of the world, our collections are the finest and most comprehensive research collections outside the country of origin. And for other regions in the world where more immediate human needs take precedence, the collections are a vital complement to what may or may not be available locally. Today we are shining a light on one special collection in particular, the Library's Persian Language Rare Materials. These documents span 800 years from the 13th through the 19th centuries, crossing Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, India, central Asia, the Caucuses and regions under Ottoman rule. And speaking to us in Persian, Arabic, Ottoman Turkish and other languages on subjects as varied as literature, philosophy, religion, science and history. It is quite simply a remarkable fusion of inquiry and discovery across time. Given this breadth and depth, it is also my great good fortune that the library has marvelous experts who in turn know willing and able guests, scholars and students who together will be breathing life into the collections for you today. I thank them for their contributions to research and learning in this, the early part of the 21st century. Our panel this morning is comprised of prominent scholars, museum specialists and the library's experts, will discuss the collection in its historical and scholarly context. After the break, we'll hear from those who worked on the collections, preservation, cataloging, digitization and public access. And then the final discussion, the panelists address how we, the Library of Congress, use our international materials for education and lifelong learning. I'm now going to turn you over to the very capable hands of the acting chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division, Joan Weeks, who will give a short overview of AMED's digitization projects past and present before introducing our first panel. Thank you very much and enjoy the morning. Joan? [ Applause ] >> Joan Weeks: Well good morning, everyone. It is my distinct pleasure and very humble experience to introduce kind of a run-through of AMED's digitization projects and programs past and present. We were an early adopter of digitization. And that's one of the things I want to focus on this morning, is innovation and cutting edge technology. And this has inspired such prolifera of digitization projects. So in 2003 -- that one went blank on me, so I'll look over here. 2003, we digitized the ancient manuscripts from the desert libraries of Timbuktu. And one of the things that I thought was so funny about this first one, just a little intrigue, because by digitizing things, not only do you get to see them outside of their boxes -- few people can see them. But the curators spend a lot of energy and effort interpreting the digital object. And you learn so much more about that particular little image or product. And this one was the laws of commerce in verse. And so this ancient way of telling people the laws of commerce, maybe they couldn't all see it. But they memorized it. And they set it to verse so it was easier to memorize. And I never would have realized that just looking at it. But here on the screen, because of the interpretation, we learn that interesting little fact about that particular manuscript. Moving right on, the next big initiative was the Global Gateway. This was an amazing process where digital projects could be uploaded on the early website. And people could begin to see those. From 2004-2005 we had the Islamic manuscripts from Mali. And there were 32 manuscripts from the [foreign name] Library. And this was in Timbuktu. It really helped bring those to the forefront. And the next thing that we had was the beautiful calligraphy sheets. And these are still amazing. Researchers are all the time asking for these. They want to see those. I just had a reference inquiry just a couple weeks ago. To be able to actually examine these online has been a huge -- very popular thing for researchers. Another thing that happened in the process of digitization was the realization that we could do web archiving. There were websites that were very ephemeral in nature. They are endangered because of the crisis and certain things. People can pull them down at a moment's notice, block access to them. And Ahmed was an early adapter of archiving websites. And this is an example in the crisis in Darfur in the Sudan. And you still can go in and view those websites that are no longer up online. Another Global Gateway was the cuneiform tablets in 2007. They had these wedge-shaped reed stylus to make impressions in these clay tablets. And to be able to see these in close proximity. Another one was the Afghan photo album digitized in 2008. And one of the things about this, it talks about the Second Anglo-Afghan war in 1878-1880. And it kind of parallels a lot that has been going on till today. And that's an invaluable resource for researchers to be able to see this online. Then in 2008 there was the Egyptian Web Archiving Project. And this focused on Egypt's amazing democratic Arab Spring process. And that was an undertaking that these democratic movements enveloped the entire region. And to be able to go back and do analysis on those endangered websites that no longer exist has been very popular. Then in 2009 after years of effort, particularly by Dr. Billington and UNESCO, 26 institutions in 19 countries contributed content to the launch of the World Digital Library. And Ahmed was right at the forefront of this, working with Bibliotech Alexandrina and the National Library of Egypt and in fact sent people to Egypt to work with them on this digitization project. And then in -- just after that in 2015 the manuscripts in St. Catherine's monastery were digitized. And what the innovation is there, these were on microfilm. And we're not talking about just taking a book and scanning it. We're talking about an innovation -- it was done through a contractor to be able to take reels of microfilm that are very difficult to use and access and find. And all of these manuscripts were beautiful but very difficult to use. And now you can completely use them online. And then in 2018 I was project manager for the Abdul Hamid Gift Book Collection. And these were gifted to the library by the sultan in 1884. And the unique story is that he had these inscribed to the National Library of Congress, over 300 books in his royal printing shop specially bound. And it was by a friendship that developed with Abram Hewitt, the member of Congress from New York, and the sultan. An unusual story you'll learn online. But to be able to have those -- and it's been extremely popular with scholars and researchers in Ottoman studies and across the way, let alone how many world leaders practice book diplomacy and inscribe book collections to the Library of Congress. Then in February 2019 we digitized the Omar Ibn Said slave narrative collection. This was a very, very long time acquisition in process. And finally it was in fruition, that many, many people on the team here at the Library of Congress. And then on a very quick turnaround to digitize it and have a major symposium and researchers. There's so much interest in this because he was the only slave known in America to be able to write his autobiography in Arabic. One of the advantages were the slave owners couldn't read it, didn't know what it was about and they weren't able to block it. Now I'm bringing you to today, the Persian Language Project that we launched in 2019. And so we're going to learn all about that today. And I just want to say that Ahmed has been at the forefront, the cutting edge from early adoption. And I appreciate Mary Jane Deeb here through her leadership has provided us with the opportunity to innovate and try new ways of digitizing our materials. And it's been an exciting process. So thank you to Mary Jane too. So now it's my great pleasure to introduce the panel. How do Persian manuscripts contribute to the study of language, literature, art, history and culture? And it's going to be moderated by Hirad Dinavari, a reverent specialist for the Iranic World Collections, Near East Section and the African and Middle Eastern Division. So our first person on the panel is Dr. Mary Jane Deeb. She's the chief -- she was the chief of the African and Middle East Division in the Library of Congress. She received her PhD in international relations of the Middle East and Africa from the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University. And her BA and MA in sociology and anthropology from the American University in Cairo. She was the president of the American Tunisian Association from 2016-2018, and an elected member of the board of directors of the African Studies Association from 2015-2018. She retired after more than 20 years at the Library of Congress as chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division in February 2019. While working at the library, she led a mission to Baghdad to assist with the reconstruction of the National Library of Iraq during the Iraq War. Accompanied by the librarian of Congress on a Congressionally-approved visit to Iran, curated and co-curated a number of exhibits and organized over 500 programs, concerts, book events among her many accomplishments. Our second member of the panel is Amy Landau. With a doctoral degree in Islamic art and archeology from Oxford University, Dr. Amy Landau has led and supported exhibitions, installations, cataloging projects, public programs and digital ventures at museums for over a decade. From 2009-2018 she served as curator of Islamic and South Asian art, and then director of curatorial affairs at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Her exhibitions include Threshold to the Sacred: The Ark Door of Egypt's Ben-Ezra Synagogue. Images of Paradise: The Garden in the Christian and Islamic Worlds. And The Art of Writing Instrument from Paris to Persia. Currently she is the research associate at the Freer Sackler Gallery. And she has spearheaded a museum of the historically black college and university initiative at Morgan State University called Art, Religion and Cities, with an aim of exploring presentations of religion in museums and increasing diversity in curatorial ranks. Relating to the subject of today's panel, Amy has been closely involved in two major efforts to digitize the Islamic and Armenian manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum, both of which were funded by preservation and access grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. And our third panelist is Fatemeh Keshavarz. Fatemeh Keshavarz holds the Roshan chair in Persian studies and directs the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Maryland College Park. She is a published poet and author of six monographs including Reading Mystical Lyric: The Case of Jalel Al-Denrumi; and Recite in the Name of the Red Rose: Poetic Sacred Making in 20th Century Iran -- winners of Choice Magazine Award. Her book Jasmines and Stars: Reading more than Lolita in Tehran was described by the ALA Book List as an excellent counterpoint to Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran. In 2007, Keshavarz addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations about the significance of cultural education for world peace. Her show Speaking of Faith featured her in an hour-long episode, The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi, and received the 2008 Peabody Award. In 2013, Keshavarz was named poet of the month by NPR's Grace Cavalieri, host of Poetry and the Poet. In 2015, the Edinburgh University Press published her latest monograph, Lyrics of Life: Sa'di on Love, Cosmopolitanism and the Care of Self. So thank you very much and let's welcome our first panel to the podium to start. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Hirad Dinavari:: Thank you very much, Joan, for reading those very distinguished bios. I'm very grateful. I know it's a mouthful to go through. And you saw the list of fantastic projects that Ahmed has taken on in previous years. Digitization has essentially come in various forms. Since we are taking a minute to take care of the technical issues, let me just take a second and say what a pleasure it is to have you here all together on this panel. It's been years that we've been working together in various ways. Persian, Islamic, Armenian related work. And you, Dr. Keshavarz, we started that wonderful lecture series during our exhibition that went on and it really reached a certain height with many lectures, sometimes 16 a year. I remember our head was spinning at that point when we had so many. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: I remember that. >> Hirad Dinavari: Absolutely. But it's truly a pleasure to have you here. And I'm going to sit down so I don't appear rude. And also Amy, I cannot thank you enough for all the wonderful presentations you've given here on Armenian art, on Persian art, on Islamic art. You were one of our guest speakers for the Persian Book Lecture Series that inaugurated the program. And of course, Mary Jane, I don't have to mention all of these projects with your tutelage and your support. You've been behind them. Most of the ones that Joan went through were pioneered and spearheaded by you. So it's truly a joy to have everyone here. I think we can go ahead and start this panel because it doesn't involve any technology. It's just questions. So while Michelle is doing her magic and taking care of the technical side, I will start with a few questions for the panel. And essentially, pose it to different people but then open up to everyone to give their point of view. Mary Jane, this one's for you. Why was it important for the Library to digitize the collection of Persian manuscripts? Yeah. >> Mary Jane Deeb: Thank you. >> Hirad Dinavari: A little louder. You have to put it on on. And we all have microphones, by the way. >> Mary Jane Deeb: Yeah. Okay. I think it was critical to do that, to digitize these manuscripts for three reasons. The first reason was the issue of preservation. And these manuscripts, as you probably see when they're shown, are beautiful. And they're also delicate. They're old and very delicate. And so the first reason to digitize them was an issue of preservation. You had to preserve them. You had to make sure that they wouldn't be damaged by use, by simply, you know, turning the pages and using them. So one of the first and most important uses was preservation. The second use also -- the second reason why we did that is to ensure that people knew what we had. There's always the assumption -- I mean, readers come and they say, "Does the Library have everything that has ever been written or ever been published?" We get that question over and over again. And no, we don't. We do not have everything that's ever been written, ever been published and so on. And then when it comes to manuscripts, the idea is that somehow the Library collected all the great manuscripts in the world and we're keeping them, we're storing them, we took them away from the countries of origin. And of course we did not. In fact, we have a policy not to take materials which are the patrimony of countries. And the only reason we have this collection of manuscripts is that we acquired them a long time ago when there were no patrimony rights. So by digitizing them and putting them up online, we let people know what we actually have. So there are no illusions, there are no ideas of -- they also get cataloged and they then become findable. And so the third point -- one is preservation, one is accessibility and knowledge about those manuscripts. And the third is searchability. In other words, by having them out there, then anyone can have access to them, can use them, can search them without touching the actual item, without, you know, damaging it. So it was very important that those materials be made available for everyone to see, everyone to have access to it. And that the original item be preserved and kept. >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you. And similarly, Amy, I know that you didn't work with our digital project, but in a way you did. Walters digitized all of their Persian, Islamic and Armenian manuscripts, and you worked with our World Digital Library and put all of it up on World Digital Library. So you can add to the question, why was it important for Walters and other institutions that you've been with to digitize these items? >> Amy Landau So to pick up what Mary Jane was saying, one in terms of Persian manuscripts and their entry into let's say the marketplace of the late 19th, 20th century where we have some of the finest Persian manuscripts ever produced, that within that sphere of trade of manuscripts have been disassembled. So digitization also gives us this wonderful opportunity to bring together some of the great manuscripts. So a parent manuscript being broken up and then brought together once again through digital means which I think is terribly important. And I do have to also support the fact that many of our collections in the United States, particularly our Gilded Age Collections, are rich because of this context of colonialism and imperialism and it being our duty to safeguard these manuscripts for humanity. >> Hirad Dinavari: Wonderful. Dr. Keshavarz, we came to you several occasion when we needed expert opinion and help on some of our manuscripts that have so-called mystery items. And we also went to the Freer and Sackler's Matt [inaudible] and Simon Riddick who unfortunately couldn't be with us today, but they're here in spirit, absolutely. It was fascinating to work with you. I remember we had people from conservation, people from cataloging and also some of your students and faculty from University of Maryland. And just seeing how you looked at the manuscripts, how you reviewed it was very fascinating. So from your vantage point as an educator, why is digitizing these manuscripts of importance? >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Yes, absolutely. I think just in a way as Amy and Mary Jane said, I think it's very important for the students of a culture to actually physically see the items. And when you look at the history, you see people traveled long distances. And there are stories for example that Omar Hiram tried to spend two, three days with a manuscript so that he could memorize as much as he could, so that when he got back to [inaudible] he could ask his students to write it down. Now, whether that's true or not, it shows that actually seeing the item up close and extracting their cultural understanding of it is physically very important. We also have stories that in the past people sometimes rented a bookstore overnight, or slept in the library, got permission so that just they could spend the night looking at a manuscript that they did not have the means to purchase or it wasn't available in the same way that we are thinking about it. And I think that this is so connected with the spirit of the Library of Congress and with Mary Jane herself. I mean, think about the trip to Iran. I think that what trip does is much more than establishing links and so forth which is important. It shows that you care about the culture that created these treasures, and you want to stay in touch. And I would say that's one of the most important aspects of seeing the manuscripts, is that when you teach the culture, they can actually see the texture of it. They can feel what -- I mean, I just saw one of their beautiful calligraphies that was there in Arabic, possibly done by a Persian calligrapher because it was [inaudible]. But I wouldn't know until I see the name. It said [foreign phrase]. So the one who wrote this [inaudible] in the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, with beautiful handwriting. [Foreign phrase]. Will enter into goodness without limit. So it just says something about how writing what is important is in the texture of the culture. And it's important for the students to see that the language is not just for commerce. It's not just for, you know, exchanging facts. It's about feeling what the culture has to offer. >> Amy Landau And how important that is in this context today. When to know someone is to understand and hear and know the words that they're saying, and that's what manuscripts do. They give us this access into what people said, what they thought was important for them, their hopes, their fears. And in terms of education, that's so important in the States today. >> Hirad Dinavari: Absolutely. Actually, relating to what you are speaking about, I have a question for you, Dr. Keshavarz. How will teachers of Persian language, Islamic civilization, art history, benefit from this sort of collection? It's essentially along the lines of what you're speaking about. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Yes, I think it's very connected. I think I would add to that that for example the varieties of calligraphy, of the handwriting. For the students to see what the calligrapher chose to do for what topic. So it's a kind of special relationship between that and the production of it that's important. To know that people in the past didn't have access to the kind of accessibility that they have now. I think that's also very important. But you know, when the manuscripts are just full of surprises, you are looking at a text that you know very well and then you suddenly see something on the margins. Or you're looking at a miniature painting and suddenly just a little rabbit is smiling in that corner. So it changes the whole picture that you have of the culture. And I want to thank Amy for saying how relevant this is to today when we are constantly hoping and praying that cultures talk to each other as opposed to anything else which could be destructive. >> Amy Landau And manuscripts are very much like archaeology. They're like a site and they preserve so long, have had so many visitations. And with the digital approach, you can see things that you wouldn't see with the naked eye, like remargination or annotations that are very small or rebinding, evidence of that. So in terms of a scientific investigation of a manuscript as an object, the digital is a fantastic approach. >> Hirad Dinavari: I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, this is something I learned the hard way. We have small little miniature manuscripts that you could barely read. You needed a magnifying glass. And the catalogers really struggled with seeing the small print. So when we digitized it and you could see it at 700 DPI, it really, really changes everything. You can really see it. So absolutely. >> Amy Landau Yeah. >> Hirad Dinavari: So Mary Jane, related to this -- >> Mic. >> Mic. >> Hirad Dinavari: I'm sorry. I apologize. So Mary Jane, related to this, how will the online collection help readers who either come to the library or patrons who see this virtually, essentially? >> Mary Jane Deeb: I think -- is this on? >> Hirad Dinavari: We can hear you, yeah. >> Mary Jane Deeb: One of the most important points -- There. Yes. One of the most important things that you both mentioned is the accessibility to the manuscript. And by digitizing it, you are able to see the details of it. But also it's a method of time. By having it digitally available, you have more time to read the manuscript. Let's say you're sitting in India and you want to read the manuscript. You don't need to be here. You don't need to spend, you know, from 8:30 to 5:00 and then you have to leave the room. You can take your time and look at each page in every detail and study it. And I think this is what digitizing manuscripts has made possible: an in-depth study. Where people from different parts of the world can look at the same manuscript at the same time, can exchange points of views, can exchange information and can take their time looking at the little fabric, can look at the little flower, can look at the marginalia, can look at all the different parts of the manuscript and try to understand it. Whatever we do and however good we are at serving materials in a reading room, it is never -- there's never enough time to do it. And one person looking at the manuscript does not allow others to look at the same manuscript at the same time. Digitizing it makes a whole community of scholars able to use the same item and take time to discuss it. >> Hirad Dinavari: Amy, I have a question for you. >> Mic. >> Hirad Dinavari: Oh, sorry. Amy, I have a question for you. It's both related to teaching and also as a curator. Looking at these manuscripts, how does it really help with the understanding of Persian societies specifically? Because you're dealing with Persianate language being used in vast regions from essentially India and the Bay of Bengal all the way to the Balkans. It's a language, yet you have books that are the same text, like the [foreign name], what have you, but produced in variants and very interesting different styles from region to region. From an art historian and curator's point of view, how would having a collection like this online assist with other museum collections around and the comparative study essentially? >> Amy Landau So let me start from a broad view. And that's in terms of documenting different forms of knowledge and different aesthetics through time and place. And we all know that the study of the Persianate world or the study of the Islamic world is difficult because we are dealing with such huge amounts of time and geographies and differences. And the importance of looking at things regionally. And in the field of Islamic studies let's say we're realizing how important it is to take those regional dives. So to not assume similarities and essentialize human experiences. So one -- the manuscript editions, one, show similarity throughout these regions, but also a great deal of differences. And the fact that manuscripts hold a civilization's knowledge. So to understand let's say in your collection works on ethics and how important that is. And here I'm going a little bit away from the art historical a bit. But to know a community's ethics. And again, I would like to point out the importance of that today. And in terms of teaching, let's say, for the digitization of manuscripts, when we digitized our manuscripts at the Walters, we were one of the first major collections to digitize the Islamic manuscripts. And that was due to the generosity of the National Endowment of Humanities. And I also want to point out the thing with digitization projects is that they ride on the tails of generosity and they beget more generosity and support of the humanities. So when we started doing this, it's amazing how many people were using our manuscripts for teaching in the classroom. And then we get that generosity back, because we made those images available. Then we received more increased knowledge on our collections, on the Walters collections rather. So that's also really important. And in terms of like the investigation of art history, it's those masterful techniques which you can see with a digital lens such as the illumination or the pigment or the refurbishment of a manuscript. Does that answer your question? >> Hirad Dinavari: It absolutely answers it beautifully. >> Mic. >> Mic. >> Mic. >> Mic. >> Hirad Dinavari: Sorry, I keep doing that. >> Just hold it here. >> Hirad Dinavari: I'll just hold it up. Yeah, so essentially connecting Amy's response from a perspective of an educator, I'm curious now -- at the University of Maryland I know you have graduate students. I know that Miss Pashai -- hi there -- Miss Pashai and others have come and used our materials, have used your materials. It would be great to see how University of Maryland could potentially use this collection for its advanced Persian students as well as its beginners. Any thoughts on that? >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Yes, absolutely. Let me just pick up where Amy left. One thing I really love about Amy's work is that she always brings the person out, you know, whether it's artwork or manuscript. It's more than an item. It's something that's created by people and just again underline of similarities and differences and the connection between the Persionate world. To me it's -- well, let me put it this way. There is -- in the Persian tradition there is a poetic tradition that spreads all over this area that we share each other's poets. We know what they wrote. A lot of people know them by heart. And sometimes we focus so much on the orality of that that we forget that there is a very important written tradition. The manuscript tradition that really upholds that oral tradition. To me, this is something very similar -- if I wanted to look for a parallel, it's the internet. It's the internet of the earlier times where somebody would go from a major city to another city and could talk to each other, connect to each other because of these traditions. Now of course this is at the heart of teaching Persian language. And you know that when our summer institute begins, any talk that's here, we just bring the students and they love it. They actually connect with these items. We sometimes might think that young people, well do they have really the patience? They do. And they find a kind of deeper level when they look at the manuscripts. So I think one thing we need to do is to keep those kind of speaker series and dissemination of knowledge that brings our students in touch with scholars and experts. So in other words, to connect the classroom with the library. I mean, we are extremely lucky to be here, to be here where the Library of Congress is. So connecting that and then using the digitization, bringing individual items into the language classroom, into the history classroom. And I think we are doing that. I think people are very happy that there's resources becoming available to them. >> Hirad Dinavari: This ties in perfectly with the next question. Go ahead, Amy. >> Amy Landau Just to riff off that point. >> Hirad Dinavari: Yeah. >> Amy Landau Sorry. Can you hear me? >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: You have to turn it on I think every once in a while. >> Amy Landau There's no on/off switch. >> Hirad Dinavari: Yes. >> Amy Landau That's the secret of life. [ Laughter ] On/off always works. So what's really going to be exciting now is that we have these great institutions who have made digital resources. And so the next step is what are we all going to do with the digital resources? So yes, they are functioning really well when it comes to researchers and to universities. But what are we going to do for those other segments like K-12? And to do that, that's going to take a lot of expertise such as the expertise in this room. How are we going to translate this material and make it relevant for our curricula and our K-12? And that's what I'm really excited about, for us to use these digital resources in new ways. >> Mary Jane Deeb: Yes, absolutely. And following up on this, it is the visuality that is so important. And when kids are in school, K-12 but also the older ones, they actually discover the meanings by looking at those images. Even if they can't read the manuscript, they discover the civilization. They discover the beauty of the costumes. They discover the beauty of the gestures. They see the beauty of the colors and the intricacy of the designs. And it makes the culture, the civilization alive. And it is. And for young people, it moves from the realm of history and the past and into something very real. And it is this that is so much -- and the Persian manuscripts are so visually, so beautiful and so intricate that it inspires. And I'm sure it inspires young people to think differently, to look at the world in a different way. It also gives you a chance to tell them things that if this item's not in front of them they wouldn't be able to connect with it. Like for example, important texts were used as a podium. You would comment on them because you knew that other people would be interested in that text. They will see your comment. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Yes. >> Mary Jane Deeb: So the connections, things that you can actually show them. Why are the margins important? Why are the commentaries important? What do they say about the people who created them? And I think -- I actually love the idea of creating K-12 ideas for the curriculum. I think we should really go in that direction. Maybe somebody is interested in that. [ Laughter ] >> Hirad Dinavari: I have good news. On the second panel of our conversation we have Lee Ann Potter right there. She and Michael Chyet are essentially going to be talking about K-12. >> Mary Jane Deeb: Wonderful. >> Hirad Dinavari: How to make this material accessible to younger audiences and to younger students. So I really think you would enjoy that. And you definitely -- I'll have to introduce you to each other. Absolutely. So the part that comes in now is tied into what we were talking about already. It's sort of circular, our conversation here. But where do you see -- and we've already done this with your institutions. But from here on where do you see potential of collaboration with us at the Library as well as African Middle Eastern Division? We have had lecture series with University of Maryland. We have used and essentially asked for your expertise on items that we could not identify and needed expert opinion on. With Freer and Sackler as well as with you, Amy, and at Walters there has been this give and take on manuscripts. One thing I can potentially think of -- and this was something that in an interesting way started years ago. We started digitizing our calligraphy sheet project. And some of them were the same manuscript that was broken up, and a few pages were in the possession of us here at the Library. A few pages were given to the Mets, and a few to the Freer and Sackler. And we digitized ours and maybe a collaborative thing down the road would be to work with various institutions that have pages of various manuscripts to virtually reconnect potentially these collections that have been broken apart essentially for selling. So I'm very eager to hear what areas you think we could collaborate both as educator and as a curator with the Library. >> Hirad Dinavari: You're good. >> Amy Landau I'm good. Okay. [Laughs] I mean, in terms of collaborative projects and contribution to scholarship and public good, one of the most powerful things to do is to bring people of different fields together. So to bring someone who's a beautiful translator of poetry and who scaffolds the American curricula to bring in the Persian poetic tradition, the aesthetic tradition. And how do you use this information, whether it be visual or textual from different points of view? And then for me, it's really been how to bring it into the education. I do like your idea of bringing together parent manuscripts. There are also institutions that can't afford to digitize. And how do we use the structures we've already set up in some of these great institutions to digitize other collections so we can bring more manuscripts together? And that work is really important work to be done under the rubric of cultural patrimony. It's a different time right now and these conversations are going on and we need to be a part of them. And thinking about how can technology inflect those conversations, if that makes sense. >> Hirad Dinavari: Absolutely. And I know that at University of Maryland you at some point were looking at the digital -- >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Humanities. >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Yes. >> Hirad Dinavari: Yes. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Yeah, I wanted to talk about that. We have within the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures first started with Persian -- creating an actual position in Persian digital humanities. In fact, our first professor of Persian digital humanities, Dr. Matthew Miller, is sitting here and is rapidly turning into a worldwide authority on the subject. So it has multiple hopes and pathways that we are going through. But definitely working on manuscripts and working with the library would be at the top of our agenda. I was thinking, I was actually talking to my husband as we were walking here. And I was thinking, imagine we would have the tool, the digital tool and the possibility to crowdsource experts. Say a professor of Persian in Italy or in Timbuktu is working on a manuscript and has the expertise to give us some metadata that would really enrich material. Of course, you have to curate that. You have to have all the tools to deal with it, but I think we should, with creating such digital hubs, to go in the direction of making it possible for their learning to also come together around the manuscripts. That is something that's really kind of a dream for me to see that everything is searchable, that you can get views from these experts and you could make it available so that when you go there you can actually see what other experts said about this particular manuscript. So our digital programs are very interested in all of this. And I'm sure that Matt would be more than happy -- I'm volunteering you, Matt. [ Laughter ] >> Hirad Dinavari: And Mary Jane? >> Mary Jane Deeb: And you know, we can also whet our appetite. There can also be partnerships online. In other words, one could partner with libraries all over the world, with museums all over the world. >> Hirad Dinavari: Yes. >> Mary Jane Deeb: And it doesn't need to be next door. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Absolutely. >> Mary Jane Deeb: Those could -- again, based on what you were both saying, there are manuscript collections that exist all over the world. And linking together, creating online and virtual conferences, having speakers -- one seated in Timbuktu, one in India, one in China, one in Italy, one in France, talking to each other and filming it. I mean, having virtual conferences where students in classrooms all over the world would be attending these programs. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: And in a way also making it clear that technology is not just for science. >> Mary Jane Deeb: No. Exactly. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: And that's great, but the humanities could be the same, absolutely. And you could have those exchanges that could be enriching for classrooms and exchanges and chat rooms. Discussing the same item or similar items that exist, written by different copiers. And I just wanted to talk about the kids. [ Laughter ] Because there's a partnership for our collection of Omar Ibn Said. It has been fantastic. We just heard today that a video that was made by high school kids had 23,000 views. >> Amy Landau Wow. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: And it was made by high school kids. It is. Exactly. [ Laughter ] So there could be also those partnerships. >> Mary Jane Deeb: Yeah, so important as well. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Exactly. >> Hirad Dinavari: Absolutely. So here is where I would like to leave it open-ended to each of you. You're all experts. We've all worked together closely. We're friends. And I just want you to say a few things that you think is crucial and important to you without having me pose a question. What's something that you think about this sort of project, digitization, manuscripts, education? What is important and dear to you that you would like to highlight and make sure it's heard and spoken about? >> Mary Jane Deeb: From my perspective, and you're the experts, it is learning about cultures and civilization which you had pointed out there. But it's getting a sense, a feel, an understanding of history, an understanding of the evolution, the change of art, of moving away from present-day news report, to having a much more global, much richer, more expanded view of the world. And understanding that the present is just a moment in time. And that really history is the accumulation of the creations that are made by people. Their physical creations like monuments and the physical creation of a manuscript. That speaks so much to the people, to the history, to the ethics, to the values, to the sense, to the aesthetics of a culture that is taken and created and brought forth. And I think this is what a manuscript holds. It holds the work of penmanship, the work of the paper that was created, the work of the craftsman that created the colors, the paint, you know, the turquoise that was used, the gold that was used. The shapes, the designs. It's that which is brought forth through those manuscripts and enlarged, expanded. And it brings the past to the present. Because a digital project is a very modern, very, you know, 21st-century. And it brings something from the past, zooms it into the present. >> Hirad Dinavari: Yeah. Into the present, absolutely. >> Mary Jane Deeb: Very quickly. >> Hirad Dinavari: Yeah. Amy or Fatemeh, whoever wants to go first. >> Amy Landau Sure. I could go quickly. One, what's really important to me is that we've made these digital resources and the importance of what are we going to do with them. I was lucky enough to be at the Walters at this wonderful time where we had a great deal of funding to digitize. And we've created some wonderful downloads. Everything's free, it's high image for publication. But now it's what are we going to do for education? That's the next step. And that's going to take a lot of people. And what also really intrigues me about digital resources is that they're riding on a platform which is shared by a platform, i.e. digital that's used for misinformation about people and about religions and about traditions. So how do we harness these digital sources for conversations let's say about religion? Which is not -- it's a passion of mine to discuss religion in a public sphere because with our school systems we talk less and less about religion and even in museums. So how do we use religious manuscripts let's say to communicate ideas truth -- I'm wary of saying truthful ideas. But ideas, ethics, religious ethics in an open sphere platform. Yeah. >> Hirad Dinavari: Fatemeh? >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Sure. Well, I think that is a world thing you can do. And as you say, the gate has been opened, is available. So a number of things that just comes to my mind. One is that we live at a time when objects are just created at the drop of a hat. They just surround us. We stop seeing important objects. Because they're created, they're made available to us, they're disposable. There are tons of others like them, so making people see -- and young people see the significance of these objects that took time to be created. Sometimes months of regular daily work. It kind of connects them with what an object could mean as opposed to the kind of cluttering our lives with objects that don't mean anything. I would like us and I hope that we would be able to bring out the creativity in these things, and the humor. >> Amy Landau Yeah. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Somehow thinking about the past, we get very serious, you know? All these towering figures. But they smiled too, you know? And the manuscripts are small too. That's why that little rabbit is important and digitization makes it possible to see the presence of that and why it was put there and so forth. So the humor, the liveliness, the exuberance even, and the dedication to the creation of these important objects that meant a lot and in turn reshaped the lives around them. So they were created and they helped in recreation of the world around them. I think it's a tall order. I'm aware that, you know, there's only so much we can do. But if we have these ideals, once the tools are available I think we can go in that direction. And it's exciting. >> Amy Landau Yeah. And also being sensitive to the interesting relationship between the digital and the physical. And someone brought it up earlier, the acceleration that goes on with learning when you have the actual object in front of you. I've taught quite often with manuscripts on the university level and also with high schoolers. And you just see people learning at such a faster rate when they actually have the object. So how do you formulate this relationship between the digital and the physical will be interesting. And also the importance of book culture. And that's something we talk less and less about currently. And what does that even mean in terms of understanding a manuscript not only as a holder of knowledge for a society but like as a physical object? Which we don't get much of anymore. >> Hirad Dinavari: Very true. Mary Jane, any thoughts? >> Mary Jane Deeb: No, I think -- >> Hirad Dinavari: You've expressed them all? >> Mary Jane Deeb: Yes. >> Hirad Dinavari: Okay, great. Well, we also have a little bit of a surprise today which is essentially -- I'll give a little background. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Don't give it away. >> Hirad Dinavari: As the Persian Studies and the Iranian Studies specialist here who's been here now since 2004, I have seen and been part of a series of wonderful projects, all supported and spearheaded by my wonderful former chief Mary Jane. On Afghanistan, on Iran we have had a series of programs. The Voices from Afghanistan exhibition, the Persian Book -- 1,000 Years of the Persian Book exhibition. The lecture series. And we've collaborated with Roshan and University of Maryland on a number of these endeavors. So -- and it's raining. So essentially we want to thank you and highlight your contribution to Persian studies. I'm really grateful. And this is something that Roshan and University of Maryland was very happy to do. They wanted to give you something of a surprise and thank you for everything you've done these years related to Persian studies. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Can I invite two colleagues to come here with a mysterious briefcase? >> Hirad Dinavari: Please. [ Laughter ] >> Here's the briefcase. >> Hirad Dinavari: There we go. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Please come up. >> Hirad Dinavari: Let's stand up here. So this is Dr. Karan Mustafah from University of Maryland and Dr. Keshavarz's husband as well as Dr. Matthew Miller. And they are essentially going to give Mary Jane something as a token of their appreciation. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: On behalf of the Roshan Institute, we want you to know that you are a great chief. >> Mary Jane Deeb: Oh how lovely. [ Applause ] >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Thank you, Dr. Mary Jane Deeb. You are a great chief. Roshan Institute for Persian Studies thanks you for your invaluable contributions to fostering knowledge about Iran. >> Hirad Dinavari: Yeah. [ Applause ] Thank you so much. Okay, so now let's go back -- you're very welcome, Mary Jane. Let's go back to question and answers. I'm going to ask the audience to feel free to ask any questions from our distinguished panelists. They're all experts in the field and as you can see, they are filled with really wonderful information about the collection as well as Persian manuscripts period. Anyone have any questions? No questions? Okay, Joan has one. >> Joan Weeks: I looked at the past and the present, but now I'd love to look at the future. And you talked about collaboration. So I'm kind of the back-end type of person sometimes with the techie part of it. And one of the things that we've been doing throughout these digital projects is innovating. And you're going to get more of that this afternoon as you hear how these things are put together. But several innovations came about -- we digitized the microfilm, then we did it in-house as part of the pilot for my project. And also one of the biggest challenges with mine was the metadata. And because Abdul Hamid gave two sets of those books, one to the Library of Congress and one to the member of Congress, the New York cataloger had cataloged his. And our wonderful cataloging team figured out a way to -- I should say he has cataloged the entire part he has. We imported that metadata. And I would like to think that that came in and we had 40 more that we had to figure out ways to get cataloged. That provides the back end that you see, all that wonderful description for these digital objects. When we look at future directions for manuscripts, not only the collaboration on the front end where people see all this, but I see a huge role for back end. The catalogers are doing what's called bib frame. We have the linked data on Wikipedia where people are doing data mining across sets. You talked about connecting these pieces, but do you see a future role at your institutions for ways of innovating, new ways of putting these digital collections online so that we see them? >> Mary Jane Deeb: May I ask -- I think there's somebody in the audience who can address this. Matt, please. With you know -- do you want to get the microphone? >> Just in general? >> Mary Jane Deeb: Yes. In response to the back end. >> Of the back end. Well, yeah, I mean I think that one of the most important things to consider with digitization projects is what are the images going to be -- what license are they going to be published under? Because most of the things that for example we would be interested in doing with the images -- I mean, there's the public facing display of the images for students or for researchers, scholars to look at and use in their traditional humanities scholarship. But then on the other side there is all these new and interesting methods of analysis, some of which Amy mentioned where you're actually doing digital archaeology on the images. But then there's also new things that are developing for example for obstacle character recognition. So we can actually make these manuscripts not just something that can be viewed by humans, but they can actually be searched and rendered, transcribed into digital text that can actually then be not only searched like you would search in Google. But then also actually used in different forms of computational textual analysis to do what they are increasingly calling cultural analytics. And so this issue of what license they're published with, levels of access, all these things are very important. And I know because it's the Library of Congress, you guys I'm sure have published it under a very open license. And maybe you guys can -- I was actually going to ask about that. What license in particular was it being published under? >> Hirad Dinavari: Okay. As far as licensing, it's not my area of expertise. So I'm not going to claim to know or be able to answer it. But anyone in the audience that could -- Dave, would you possibly have an answer for that? No. [ Inaudible ] Go ahead and -- yeah. >> Sorry. For each digital collection we have an About the Collection. There's collection items but also on the upper left-hand corner there's a link to the right statement that general counsel's office set up. >> Hirad Dinavari: Yeah, for this specific project we had to go through the Office of General Counsel. The manuscripts are public domain so there isn't an issue. One or two of them that were published after 1910, we had to get permission. And one of them was from 2001. I had to write the Ayatollah who wrote it and actually get his permission to put it up. The other items are from we think Afghanistan 1910-1920. We have no idea who the author is or the scribes were. So we've put it up with the understanding that if someone has an issue or comes up and says something, then at that point we'll have to address it. But because we could not -- we tried to do our due diligence. And as of right now it's up. And I think for much of the -- until the 1920's is fairly safe. It's after 1920's when the copyright law kicks in that it becomes a little bit more problematic. So for the lithographs which is the next part of the project, a number of them are past 1920. And for those items I may have to work on, you know, some sort of rights or what have you. The items that are from the 1840's till the 19-teens are fine. I hope that answers it a little bit. Yeah. >> Amy Landau What's also interesting here is that I think with this very question and the pause in discussion points to something that's quite important. And that's humanities scholars who are working on these digitization projects need to be working with those in other fields. Because this is not our area of expertise. And I'm just thinking about the museum context and that many of us have gotten involved in these digital projects. And it's really not our business. And how we need to also work with those in other fields and also for-profits to get this at another level. Because we can't be expected to have expertise in all these areas. In my experience, I have been fortunate enough to work with someone by the name of Will Noel who's now at the University of Pennsylvania. And he was the one who initially hired me for the Islamic digitization project. And he knew a fantastic amount of this information. So it's going to also bring in people like Will Noel into these larger projects. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: May I also comment on that? That's why -- actually that's a great point. And that's why it's important to train people who will be in digital humanities. So it's a kind of a hybrid kind of scholar. We actually have PhD student applying for that, to come here and he will be working -- he has a PhD in the digital area. And he's coming here to work with me and Matt. I won't be able to speak that language. Sometimes when Matt's talking about something, I'm like, "Well, this sounds like not a language I understand." But I think a combination of working together is hopefully, you know -- and we were like, "Why do you want to come here?" And he said, "Because you guys have digital humanities and this is what I have been looking for, to put this technology in the service of the humanities." And I think we have more and more hybrid scholars in various areas who could handle things that have two different dimensions. >> Hirad Dinavari: Any thoughts? No? Okay. >> Amy Landau But also the complexity of those digital humanities projects. So you need translators. You need art historians. You need those -- >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: A team basically. >> Amy Landau Yeah, exactly. >> Hirad Dinavari: It's a collaborative effort, absolutely. >> Amy Landau Yeah. >> Hirad Dinavari: Any other questions from everyone who's sitting on this side. >> Mary Jane Deeb: We have one here. One there. >> Hirad Dinavari: Yes, go ahead. Thank you, Wanda. >> I have a really terrible question. You are all scholars. Do you ever feel that something can be too accessible? >> Amy Landau Say that again? >> Hirad Dinavari: Too accessible. >> Do you ever feel that things are becoming too accessible? That people are skimming because they can not only access manuscripts, but they can search them so easily that they just skim off things and they don't have a real understanding of context. They also don't know the pleasure perhaps. Even when I wrote my dissertation, I remember to get to a manuscript in England to see a medieval Hebrew manuscript, I saved my money, I saved my time. I leave. I remember the way my heart was beating when I knew I was going to see this manuscript. Nowadays I could just do it like that online. And I can't help -- I see all the positives. But am I the only one who feels a sense of loss? >> Amy Landau That's a great question. >> Mary Jane Deeb: But I would like to add that the fact that we have digitized is simply making it more accessible to more people. However, the joy of seeing the item itself remains. They're still at the library. So we still want to bring them here to the library to see the item. And hopefully by having digitized the manuscript, people will be enticed to come and see the real thing. And the real thing remains the manuscript. You're absolutely right. I mean, it is the beauty of the item itself that remains in the item and cannot be any way replicated by a digital image. So the digital image in a way is a hook for the real scholars. It is a way of enticing them to come to the library. It's a way of letting them know that it's there. But if you really want to see the item itself, to touch the paper, to look at the colors, to see the item, then you really have to come to the library. And this is why it's important that we have them here and that we preserve them and that we keep them. And we keep them for the scholars, for the ones who really, really, you know, love those manuscripts and want to work on them. The others are a way of reaching out to people who are far away, who will never be able to save enough money to travel and come, who will never be able to -- who are unable to come. Who can dream. And so we let them dream. We let them dream and let them know that the item is here or at Walters, at the University of Maryland or wherever they are. And they at least will be able to see an image and to flip through it before the real scholar eventually. It is the library that has the item, I would say. >> Hirad Dinavari: Okay, we are running out of time. This will be the last question because we have to take our break. >> Yeah, somebody else has a question. This is kind of a follow-up question. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Okay. Why don't you follow up? >> I have a follow-up. >> Okay, so I actually wanted to follow up with a question on exactly what you were saying. And somewhat in response to your question, and maybe Amy would be in the best position to answer this. I've heard anecdotally from a lot of collections that have digitized their manuscripts that it's actually in a very real way driven traffic, driven foot traffic to the original. Has there been any -- do you have numbers or studies? I'm just curious. Or even just in your experience at Walters, is that a real thing? Do the anecdotal stories hold up on that? >> Amy Landau Yeah. I think it definitely does drive traffic. People know it's out there. They want to study it. They want to experience the actual object. But it would be really good, because we talk about this a lot and the theoretical that it would be great to have data on this. Do you want to -- >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Yes, I think actually we were together speaking with a publisher. I won't, you know, reveal more details. But just basically exploring if we could have a series. And he was suggesting that they'll do a book online, the digital version as well as the paper version. And we said, "You really want to do both?" And he said, "We will have better sales of the actual paper print version if we have the digital version." So I don't know, again -- and it's open access. And still people go and buy it. But I want to acknowledge your concern, because I share that. And I think it's very important that we don't develop a digital mind and a digital eye that just searches for something that's easy and you skim through. And again, I haven't really read any systematic studies. But it seems to be something that younger people get used to doing, just skimming, looking for the "facts" that they are searching for. And I think that we are going to overcome that. It's just like when the radio started, when television started, when cinema started. Habits of dealing with the new things are going to change. And this isn't -- this rush to just use the digital materials in the way that it is used now is going to calm down into a variety of approaches to digital tools. But I feel your concern. I just wanted you to know. >> Amy Landau Yeah. And going back to that concern, I remember when we were digitizing the Islamic manuscripts and there's always binaries in these conversations. Just as information can be used for good, it can also be used for bad. But then it's just putting it out there and seeing what people do with it. And we were so pleasantly surprised to see people curating their own collections, animating our images so they come to life. And it's just -- it was a really fantastic experience, just also to release the information and see what happens, what people do who don't have expertise knowledge, how they respond to these images and information. Yeah. >> Hirad Dinavari: Absolutely. So on my end I have to kind of quickly say that we digitized these mainly because when I went to California and all over, a lot of Iranian Americans, Afghan Americans and others wanted to see these but they couldn't travel here. So this is a wonderful way for them to be able to see it long-distance. However, it's never going to be the same as the original. The scans are fantastic, but the originals are something else. Anyway, one more question and end of story. [ Inaudible ] >> Just a quick comment on that, I don't know if this is projecting. But I have two instances of people coming into our reading room and asking for the calligraphy sheets that they saw online. And the fact that they had been digitized and had little codes in the bottom enabled me to go in the rare area and pull those and find them and serve them within a matter of minutes. And if they had just walked in off the street and they hadn't been digitized, I wouldn't have been able to do that quickly. So two case studies of that. >> Hirad Dinavari: Absolutely. Yes? >> I have two comments. One is that somehow, sometimes in the digital world and with the digital humanities one has to remember that it's just a simulacrum of the original. And what gets lost and what can't get digitized is the vibrancy of the paper, the thickness of the paper, the thickness of the media on the paper. The fact that the gold jumps out at you. These are all kinds of values that are totally lost in the digital realm. So that's -- And one of the reasons I became a conservator -- I'm a conservator in the Library -- is that as a student of art history, to me the job where -- the only job where someone was in constant contact with the original in academia and not in academia was the conservator. So I'm just, you know, an advocate for the original. >> Hirad Dinavari: Absolutely. >> I do like digital because it's great for PowerPoints and teaching. And the other point I wanted to make is looking at art and western art and Asian art and Islamic art, one thing that always struck me as a child was that Islamic art painting is usually in a very personal environment. It's in a book. And it often is -- it's belletristic. It's not necessarily religious art. In fact, it is very rarely religious art, the paintings. So it is all about culture, romance, everyday life, fireworks, the baker, you know, people bathing. And that is what makes it unique compared to European art which is of the same time period, which is religious, historic history paintings. And so I think as teachers, that is something that would appeal extremely well to a K-12 audience, specifically a K-5 I would think. >> Hirad Dinavari: And that was Yasmeen Khan who will be giving a wonderful talk on conservation on the second panel. We have to take a break. The questions can continue during the break. Thank you very much to everyone who came. I know that 9:00 AM was a little too early. Especially I want to thank our wonderful speakers and guests who have come from the University of Maryland, you know, the Smithsonian and Baltimore. And Mary Jane, thank you very much for speaking on behalf of the Library and being here and everything you've done for Iranian and Persian and Afghan studies over the years. Thank you very much. >> Mary Jane Deeb: Thank you. [ Applause ] I just want to thank the University of Maryland. I want to thank Fatemeh and everybody who has done such fantastic work with us, who have supported us with our exhibit, our version exhibit, with our series, with the programs done in our reading room and has done so much to enhance our Persian collections. And thank you for this award. It was completely unexpected and I will treasure it for a very long time. So thank you so, so much. >> Fatemeh Keshavarz: Honestly the pleasure is ours. We really benefitted from this. >> Mary Jane Deeb: And your present was very special, so thank you very much. You have done so much to enhance all our work and everything we've done, so thank you. And thank you, Amy for being there, for being a participant in all our programs and in having made things richer and more beautiful by your presence and by your work. So thank you. And thank you, Hirad, for inviting me and for including me in this program. I'm very touched. Thank you. >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you, everyone. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Hirad Dinavari: Okay, thank you everyone for coming back for panel two. All right. Yeah, as you see on the screen, we have a wonderful list of what's happened, what's going to be happening shortly. Panel two is really celebrating everyone who's worked on the project. And I have Michelle here who's helping me kindly go through the items. I'm going to first introduce a little video, four-minute video which has been given to us by the Digitization Services Section. Tom Rieger is the head of that section and he is going to give a brief description afterwards. But first let's enjoy this four-minute video on behalf of the Library to see how the Library actually does digitize. [ Music ] >> Physical objects degrade over time. There are some things that if we don't do that, if we don't digitize them now, they'll be lost forever. Here we are in the beginning of the 21st century in a race against time to save all of this fantastic material. [ Music ] >> One of the reasons that we scan and digitize the artifacts at the Library of Congress is to expose more Americans and people around the world to the treasures that we hold here. For example, Alexander Hamilton's papers are now online. And you can read the letter that the popular musical references when he talks about the best of wives and best of women in his own hand. >> We do such a vast quantity of digitization that most commercial cameras would fall apart just the way they're designed and built. They're not made for this. >> This is volume 91 of the papers of Abraham Lincoln. Originally it was in the collection of Mary Todd Lincoln. Robert Todd Lincoln his son donated them to the Library. This is him riding with General McClellan. [ Music ] >> In '97 the Library was going toward digitization. The technology in '97 was more linear which was basically like a flatbed scanner used still today. A typical document of 8x10 or 12x17 could take several minutes. Since then we've gone to instant capture technology which now regardless of the size of the object, it's about a two-second process. They can look and hone in on them at 100% and see things that really the naked eye cannot see having the original in front of them. There could be some notes inside the gutter of a book for example that are in pencil, very faint. On a digital copy you can zoom in and actually see. [ Music ] >> Collection is the Farm Security Administration Office of War Intelligence. So it was about the '30's and '40's. Because we want these with a digital surrogate, we want to make sure that they look a little snappier to the eye, something that people would want to see. Now we can actually read what it's saying which is just amazing. [ Music ] >> When we first put maps online at the Library of Congress in a bout 1998, we had 29 of these. And it broke the system because we were exposing the original TIF image. And pre-2000 the systems just were not capable of handling that kind of file size. So we went into compressing the images. We are now using JPEG 2000 images. We were lucky to get this printer. It's 60 inches wide. Initially we only had about a 30-inch surface. And since you can see all of our maps, size does matter in this division. [ Music ] >> We started with megabytes, quickly went to terabytes. And now we're dealing with petabytes and growing. [ Music ] >> Many of the off-the-shelf cameras today do an amazingly good job, right down to a cell phone. There have been cases where very local historic societies or some of the Native American tribes can't afford, don't have access to the kinds of tools that we would recommend, but they have a cell phone or they have an iPad. They can capture materials that might otherwise get lost. >> Well, we released the papers of Rosa Parks, for example. For the first time you could read accounts of that day in her own hand. It's a really great reminder that these people who we treasure as icons were real humans who had families and everyday lives and it really brings a fuller picture of their lived experience. >> It's all of this wonderful material that would never, ever see the light of day unless it were digitized. That's the neatest project I've worked on here. [ Music ] >> Hirad Dinavari: Okay. If you take a look at the handouts, the second page of the bio starting with Tom Rieger, it lists everyone's bios for the next panel and the conversation that follows. This way you can follow and see who does what in more detail. But in order to save time, I'm going to ask Tom Rieger who is the manager of the Digitization Services section to speak about the institutional approach to digitization at the Library of Congress. >> Thomas Rieger: Thank you. All right, good morning. I'm going to paint you a picture that then frames what we do here, okay? The Library of Congress has -- according to the paper in front of me -- 3,096 permanent employees. These numbers are a little bit old but not that old. So you know, more or less, right? We have just short of 170 million items in our collections. That's items, right? And we're adding 12,000 give or take items a day to the collections. A day. Right? We are the largest library in the world. We also are the largest digital library in the world. To give you some sense of what that includes, we have about close to 25 million books. We have about 15 million items in the non-classified print collections, various kinds of things. We have 128.7 million items in non-classified special collections, including 4 million or so audio materials, 72 million manuscripts. 5.6 million maps. I said thousand. That's just not real. 17.2 million microforms of various shapes and sizes and configurations. There's all sorts of those. 1.8 million moving images. That's a lot of motion pictures. Okay? And 15.7 million visual materials which includes about 14.9 million photographs, 100,000 posters, 680,000 prints and drawings. And just other stuff of about 3.4 million. That is an enormous amount of material. So -- With all of that and the recognition that we are the largest library in the world with amazing materials, we have a heavy responsibility in how we care for them and what we do with them. We acquire, we try to acquire the most important materials in every area of human knowledge. And I added right at the end of this human and other. Because we're starting to have artificial knowledge, and that's an interesting field of how do we collect it. We preserve these things as best we can. We are the stewards of these collections and that's where the amazing depth of talent of our subject matter experts, our conservators, our professional staffs behind the scenes. And they don't like to come out and talk, which you'll see later here. They're hesitant here to actually get up and, you know, get recognized. Okay? It's our task to make these materials accessible to the world which is what you heard just before. I couldn't do it any better, couldn't state that any better. That's why we digitize, is to help make these things available. And it's also our task as the Library of Congress to lead the way for others, to show others how we can do this, how you can do this. I mentioned in that little video, if you've got nothing else, you probably have a cell phone or an iPad or something, okay? We can preserve these items for history. One way or another, there's no longer a reason or an excuse for why we can't do that. Okay? So the digitization program at the library is really just a small component of what we do here. But it's one that I'm really proud to be a part of, contribute to it. And it's really, really an honor to be able to point it out to the world as a model of how to get things done. I present frequently to other institutions that are building programs, starting up and doing this. And they're absolutely awed by the magnitude of what we do here. So just to keep this under a few minutes, here's a brief overview of what our digital collections are at this moment in time. We have over 170 million digital items online right now. 170 million. Okay? Now an item is not a book. An item might be -- it might just be a single manuscript. It's very difficult to contextualize that. It could also be a motion picture. These things are not all equal, so it's very difficult but the number I was given is 170 million. To put it slightly differently, we have 130 years of audio online right now. And more every day. Just all kinds of materials. We have 6 million MP4 videos online right now. And we have 89 million PDF files. And of course these numbers are all obsolete because they weren't acquired today. They're probably a week or so old. So that's where we are. Now to give you an ongoing sense, we're acquire or we're digitizing over 7 million files a year. And that is a really monstrous challenge to decide which 7 million do we do. What's important? And that's where the experts within the library from the director level on down weigh in on with the resources we have, what's the most important next thing to do? And that's a whole planning process. It's a huge effort. It's an important effort here at the library. But it assures us that we're not just randomly doing things. We're very careful about what we select to digitize with all sorts of viewpoints weighing in on it. How we digitize it. Technology-wise, we are the best there is. The digitization work we do here sets the standard for the world. And what about the metadata? How is it discoverable? What's the condition of it? All of these things have to weigh in to the program that we do for digitization. And again, this is a model that other institutions are following. So thank you and with that I'm going to turn it over to the panel. [ Applause ] >> Hirad Dinavari: I have a question for you, Tom. >> Thomas Rieger: Uh-oh. >> Hirad Dinavari: Specifically people who worked on this project, the Persian one, who in your office would you like to specifically essentially acknowledge and let everyone know who they were and what work they did? >> Thomas Rieger: Oh my goodness. That is really hard because you have the people that are the face of it, like Sam. Sam Manavong, okay, who is on my team, but he's really an expert in the subject, okay? But then you have the -- and I don't want to mention too many others because really and truly there are so many. It could be the project manager that found the funding and arranged to get the work done. That would be Mike Fisell. Okay. It might be Melissa Hier who coordinated the original efforts to get that project teed up to be done. There's dozens of people involved in this. And it's -- and that's probably why they're so hesitant to actually put their faces up here and be recognized, because they know that it's not just them. It's so, so many other people involved. >> Hirad Dinavari: This is why I want to highlight that there was a whole network of people involved just in the division that Tom is in. I also want to thank Mike Newbert for initially helping me with the proposal for the project. >> Right. >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> Hirad Dinavari: I appreciate it. I'm now going to take a second and ask all of the wonderful panelists on the next panel who are doing presentations to come up. Yasmeen, Tamera, Domemico and Dave Reser, if you could please all come up and take your seats. We're also going to go on a little journey. The journey is going to be me describing to you what a manuscript, a Persian manuscript had to go through in order to start from the Persian rare book cage and end up as a digitized, you know, virtual being. So for that I'm going to ask my partner in crime Sam Manavong who is in the digital team, come up here and give me a little assistance as well. Sam has been involved from the get-go. [ Applause ] And I'm going to give him one of the manuscripts that he has worked on [foreign name], The Licit Magic by [foreign name]. He is going to walk around and show folks what an original looks like so that you don't see just the version -- just the electronic and the digital version, but you actually see an original one as well. So Michelle is going to help me and I'm going to walk you through a little bit of a backstory to give you some background on how this project all came about. You earlier on heard from Joan Weeks who went over all of the various projects -- all of the various projects that the Near East Section and especially the African Middle Eastern Division have worked on. Well, I started working with the Persian Language Rare Materials mainly -- and especially digitization -- mainly with the World Digital Library Project that started in I think 2009 or '08. '08 or '09. And continued for a number of years. World Digital Library had several simultaneous projects. Two of them involved me. The first one was the Islamic Manuscripts that involved about five Persian manuscripts. The rest were Arabic and Turkish. And the Afghan project which the Carnegie Corporation had supported. And we selected about 20 manuscripts in Persian and over 80 lithographs in Persian. Then there was a good amount of [inaudible] materials as well. And the goal of that project was to digitize content, make it available. And then a copy of these were sent back to various institutions in Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan is war-torn, this allowed generations in Afghanistan to essentially have high-resolution images of their own heritage. But first, before we go into all of that, what exactly is the Iranian world? What exactly is Persian? Most people are not familiar. My colleague Michael Chyet is going to get into detail on this in the conversation later. This is a map, just so you can frame your mind. From the west in Anatolia, the Kurdish regions, all the way to the east in Pakistan and Afghanistan up into China, the Balotia and Pustia regions and the Pameri languages. These are the range of Iranic or Iranian languages. The next slide is more specific to our program. In green they have the three main dialects if you like or forms of Persian. Farsi in Iran and Dari in Afghanistan and Tajiki in central Asia. And so you see that Persian is spoken in a fairly large area. 110 million people speak it. So historically Persian was spoken and used in the gunpowder empires that you're seeing here in the medieval era. The Mughals in India, the Safavids in Persia. Back one. And also the Ottomans in the -- what do you call it? Much of the Near East and North Africa. Now the Ottomans used Turkish and Arabic as well, but Persian was another language that was used simultaneously. In the central area, what is now Iran, Afghanistan and central Asia, that's the heartland and the birthplace of the language. And the Mughals in India, Muslim rulers of India, used it for 400-500 years as the official language. So that's the legacy of how wide the language was used. The World Digital Library's goal was to digitize and make available materials in all these various languages. And under the Afghan project we digitized a substantial amount. And you can see the description on the screen of materials from Afghanistan and about Afghanistan. Next. So here is a little bit more background. If you look at the second paragraph on the screen, all those Afghan institutions got a copy of all the materials we digitized. Next. And here is the picture and the ceremony in which Dr. Haden gave the Afghan minister of culture copies of all the digital materials for him to take back. As well as Vertong Gregorian who is representing the Carnegie Corporation in the image. I specifically want to thank two people who worked hand-in-glove with us on the World Digital Library team. Chris Masiangelo and Sandy Bastian. There was a huge network of people that were involved, but the two of them worked very closely with all the Persian and Afghan-related material with us. And then next, another thing was happening. Around 2012 there was an interest in doing a display and an exhibition for our program. I mean, for our materials. And we started the proposal process and had an exhibition. And we went to the Iranian American community and you see their names here, and raised a good amount of funding in order to have the exhibition. And the exhibition showcased -- you can keep going -- showcased a number of -- about 40 manuscripts and lithographs that grabbed a lot of attention and people were very interested in this material. And as a result, after we digitized materials for the Afghan WDL project and had an exhibition, there was a real interest in making this material accessible to people all over the US and the world. And to digitize everything, not just the front page on the exhibit but the front to the back of the -- thank you, that's perfect. One back. No, one after this. Yeah, that's great. So essentially that same year after we decided to work on our rare materials, we got fellows, and that year we had four wonderful fellows in 2014 for the African Middle Eastern Division. And I got a wonderful fellow by the name of Amanda Lanzillo who worked on my rare Persian materials in the cage and made a hands list of all the manuscripts, lithographs, early imprints and contents that were in the Persian cage. Here you can see her -- >> I'm working with the Persian manuscripts and rare books, helping to organize and eventually create a hand list for all of the rare books, lithographs and manuscripts. So we have everything from the extremely rare manuscript printed in the 14th century to very nice coffee table books done with a modern press. >> Hirad Dinavari: Okay, so you get an idea of what this is about. We are not going to show you the whole video, but it's available on YouTube for you to see. Amanda started working on it with me for four months and we put together a hand list. At the same time in this period, we were asked by Library Services to submit proposals for digitization. And the director at the time had asked us and I submitted a proposal for -- and you see the proposal here -- digitizing all the rare materials. Anything that was not done by WDL that was rare Persian manuscripts, lithographs or early imprints and book bindings, Islamic book bindings, or added to a four-part project. What you are seeing and we are celebrating today is part one, which is 170 Persian manuscripts that have now been digitized. The lithograph and other portions are about to be started and they're going to continue for the future years. There's about 600 lithographs, about 150 early imprints and about 100-200 Islamic book bindings from all over the Islamic world. This is essentially the journey that a manuscript took. Now you saw some over there. But mainly there were several workflows. The main workflow was at the book from the Persian cage over to conservation where Tamar and Alan Hailey would kindly look at it and decide if it needed treatment or not. And the items that were passed, that would go cataloging and Alan Mayberry at the time and later Michael Chyet, our catalogers, would catalog them. Then it would go to Domenico and Sergei's team, Miss Courtney Winston and others who worked in that office to essentially scan the materials. The files were then processed also by them. Andrew Cook comes to mind at the time. I'm mentioning names of people I worked with directly. Then some of the items needed post-scanning treatments, so they would go back to conservation. Other items did not. And then it would finally go back to the cage. Now this is the general workflow for most of the material. Not all of them followed this. Some were too brittle and ended up going to conservation and staying there. Some got cataloged first. But this was the general direction. After everything was scanned, they essentially went to the web design team and Chris Demar and others worked to use the existing library's project, one mechanism to create a digital project. And that's when this last fall, I would say November and December, the work started on putting together the website. If you go to the next one. Let me also backtrack a little bit. For a while as things were being scanned, they were sitting on the back end on a server under those links that you're seeing, under the name PLMP, Persian Language Manuscript Project. So as we were scanning them, you see M001 is manuscript one. M002 is manuscript two. Go ahead. They were being scanned into large 700-DPI TIF files. And eventually -- go ahead -- when the project was finalized and the web design was done, we had this gorgeous page that you're seeing now. If you could go to the website. Thank you. And essentially -- yeah. The website was born as of March 20th of this year in time for Persian new year. Anyway, the website's available online and you can go ahead and look through it. But essentially 155 of the manuscripts are fully digitized and they're up right now. Essentially I just wanted to put up the names of everyone who worked on this. So Amanda Lanzillo, as you see over there, Michael Newbert and Sam Manavong. Conservation, these are the people I work with directly. There are about 50-60 people library-wide that were involved. But these were the ones that I worked with closely and therefore I have mentioned them and put their names up here. I also wanted to mention in the scan lab for a good period of time we had a workflow in which Jan Lancaster would come and go through every manuscript and lithograph and make sure she had the right pagination and make comments on whatever repairs and items that needed to be scanned. That was a huge task that took almost a year to do, and I'm extremely grateful. At the web design side also I wanted to mention besides Chris Demar, Bill Kelham as well as Brock Sussman who worked extensively on the project. The Library also was interested in our manuscript project and wanted to actually see them. I was given the honor of putting together a nice display for her so she could see the manuscripts. And she was very, very much impressed and interested in how beautiful they are. Now we are going to move from my little journey with the manuscript over to our wonderful distinguished speakers. And each of them is going to highlight what I talked about. So from conservation we have Yasmeen Khan who for years has worked with us on many of our projects in Ahmed. And she's now our head of the Paper Conservation and former conservation division liaison for digital projects. But she's involved pretty much with digital content as well. And then Tamera Ohanyan is also the senior book conservator who pretty much worked on all of the 170 Persian manuscripts and made sure that they were all worked -- you know, either ready for scanning or were treated or other work that's being done now post-scanning. But of them have a little presentation and I'm going to have them come up and do their part. Thank you for your patience and thanks for listening to the journey. [ Applause ] >> Yasmeen Khan: Hello, everybody. I'm here to speak on behalf of my colleague Alan Hailey, conservation liaison for digital projects who can't be here today as he's traveling. He's in New York for work, he says. He acts as coordinator for the stabilization and treatment of collections materials brought to conservation for the pre-scanning, for all scanning preparation and represents the Conservation Division's interest throughout the duration of the scan projects. In addition, he is the lead of the four-person Conservation Division Digitization Team that works slowly on digitization projects. And this is one of many, many projects that they worked on. The Conservation Division's participation in the digitization process ensures the protection of the collection during the image process which has the potential to put original materials at risk for damage. And the slide that Hirad showed of the, you know, the little circles and how the work process goes -- at every single step the book is gone through from the beginning to the end. So actually often the process itself is the most amount -- represents the most number of times the book has actually been handled in the past 50 years. And in the next few years as well. So digitization puts a lot of pressure on the object itself in the process of digitization. We often start by lending a voice to discussions on which type of scanning equipment will be most -- oh, can you go back to this slide? Okay, this is it. On the type of scanning equipment that will be most favorable for materials that are in less than ideal conditions. And how that equipment might affect materials of different formats. In the same spirit, the Conservation Team provides care and safe handling instructions for all scan operators working within the library on rare materials, specifically tailoring the instruction to focus on the types of collection materials within each project. As well as the equipment assigned for the project. In addition, a more general scan station best practices is also covered. In this setting, an essential line of communication gets established between the scanning staff, the images and everybody and the conservation team which is useful as the project progresses and unforeseen problems with the materials arise. As early as possible in the planning stages of the scan project, conservationists try to conduct an informal survey. Sampling collections items included in the proposal to understand, one, the likely impact stabilizing these materials will present to the conservation team. Two, the skills required within conservation to prepare those materials. And three, the conservation supplies that will be needed to complete the project. And depending on the project, if it's 15,000 music sheets, that means a lot of folders and all kinds of things that have to be ordered. This impact on the Conservation Division is given a feasibility score and is weighed along with the project's impact on other stakeholders including cataloging, copyright, metadata and several presentation parts of the library, before official approval is given for any digitization project. After approval of the project, the conservation team begins an item-by-item assessment to select the material, noting condition, acceptable degree of opening if it is a bound object, and treatment requirements to enable the capture of a complete image of the original with all its informational content. Treatments for scanning projects can vary from the minimal to complex and might include cleaning, disbinding, mending, aqueous treatment, use of organic solvents, consolidation of pigments and much, much more. For some items that are particularly hard to handle due to size, fragility or format, such as scrolls, the conservation team will provide special handling assistance at the time of the image capture, working with scan operators to ensure the safety of the item during the process. And as Hirad mentioned, occasionally follow-up assessments and post-scan treatments for some items will be required, especially for books that have been disbound for treatment. Such materials are less risky to scan before being resewn. So they're scanned and then returned to conservation for binding. If we could go to the next slide, Michelle. Thank you. We knew from the initial sampling of the Persian manuscript collection that this project would require thorough knowledge of conservation of materials found in Islamic manuscripts and Persian manuscripts. The more thorough survey revealed condition issues that would need to be addressed. For example, 70% of the bound volumes were heavily damaged by insects and use. 100% showed service dirt and accretions. 10% had cracked ruling lines around the text where copper-containing pigments had been applied. So the text area was falling out of the page. 80% of the collection had brittle mends, many covering text. 15% of the volumes had deteriorated leather covers. And 20% of the collection was mold damaged, seriously weakening the leaves of the book. So Tamera Ohanyan, senior book conservator of the conservation team, led the treatment efforts for this collection, bringing to the project a vast knowledge and experience in treatment techniques. And her superior judgement in developing treatment proposals and tight management to prepare all these severely damaged items for the completion of the project. And this survey was of all 170 manuscripts that were digitized. As seen in these images, insect damage was pervasive and presented a formidable set of challenges both to the conservator and to the scanning staff. The insects, possibly silverfish, often eat through a bound volume leaving a Swiss cheese appearance, resulting in isolating fragments of paper that fall loose and float free. For the conservator, the book becomes a puzzle of interlocking fragments that must be carefully positioned and rejoined with gossamer thin paper to make the leaf intact once again without covering text, without making text illegible rather. Without the conservators' careful intervention the manuscript would not be handled. The solubility of the carbonates and pigments used in these manuscripts added difficulty, as conservators had to use non-aqueous adhesives and methods to treat them. Slide three, Michelle. From right to left here we see -- well, from left to left actually we see our rare book conservation intern, graduate intern, Natalia Malega, treating one of the more badly damaged artifacts in the collection under Tamera's direction. And the Conservation Division digital preparation team on the left is made up of four members, all of whom contributed in important ways to this project and many other digitization projects. Alan Hailey, closest to me. Kate Morrison Dansis, Rachel Bissonette and Tamera Ohanyan. And she's now going to describe for you two of her Persian manuscript treatments. Tamera? [ Applause ] >> Tamera Ohanyan: Thanks. In the past few years I've been working on conservation treatment of bound and flat Persian language manuscripts. I performed both complex and simple treatments for this collection dating from 15th century to 19th. Today I will talk about treatment of two items from this project. The first is an 18th-century Islamic Persian genealogical scroll from India, beautifully illuminated and written in Persian language. It is important religious as well as legal document. The scroll is formed of seven paper fragments of different length. As is common, the text is contained with the panels which are delineated by red and blue ink. The writing contains 30 different calligraphy styles. There are written texts on the scroll margins from the great poets of Persia. The illumination has floral geometrical designs. The scroll was in poor condition and has had many physical damages. Due to the thickness of the paper and old cloth lining, the scroll was not lying flat but popping up and creating peaks along creases. For scanning, the treatment required flattening of the peaks. To do that, the full treatment was performed. Paper was dry cleaned, humidified, flattened and mended both on dorsal and versal. The rolling diameter of the scroll was changed and custom designed housing was made. I've provided safe handling assistance during the digitization process. And you can see pictures before treatment -- Before treatment and then after treatment. The second item is 18th-century [foreign name] Persian manuscript. The paper is decorated with wood block prints in amber color paint with burns in and black over painting. There are geometrical and floral scenes in the design as well as script. The main script was in poor condition with many paper losses, stains from water and with no cover. In addition, restricting the opening of the book to 45 degrees at the most. And I provided the following treatment for this item. Pages were dry cleaned, then with the help of my two other colleagues I made new paper on a lathe casting machine which had the characteristics of the original warm paper. Pages were mended, guarded and resewn. And at the end a new leather cover was made sympathetic to the style and the time of manuscript. And I want to make a little remark that I'm not the only conservator in conservation who worked on this project. I coordinated this project but there are other senior book conservators, technicians and past and former interns working on this project. Then Kate, Rachel and Natalia are here as representatives. >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you very much. Thank you Tamera for the detail, and thank you Yasmeen. Domenic, I think if you like you can do your presentation from there because you have the screen in front of you. And yes, we would love to hear from you. Yeah. >> Domenico Sergi: Is this on? Yeah, okay. My name is Domenic and I manage the Digital Scan Center here at the Library and work closely with every team that has presented here today on every project. Okay. So we are responsible for following the requirements that are given to us by the division -- Conservation Division, especially for the material handling side of things. We choose the equipment based on those recommendations. In this case, we did this project at a 600-PPI on each page of these documents. And we also shoot everything at a 1-to-1 of its original size. That way it's recorded as it actually is. Color is very important in this business, so we use the color checker you see there to my right, to everyone's right. And so we shoot the aim points on this color checker to achieve the most valued colors for representation. The gray chart on the left side is to measure the resolution and the measurement of the items. So we use these two targets -- I'm sorry -- at the beginning of each session as we set up our cameras. The lighting is also set up based on the items we'll be shooting. They're set up for contrast and they rake across the items to cut, allows us to capture as much detail because of the wonderful illustrations in these books. The gold leaf for example has to be lit up a certain way. Okay. Okay, next. >> Hirad Dinavari: The clicker isn't working? >> Domenico Sergi: Oh, sorry. Okay. So we had -- Courtney Wessington was our project leader within my group. And she worked on a variety of cameras with other colleagues. Here she's shown using a P65 which is a 65-megapixel camera back. It's an instant capture device set up on a cradle -- I'm sorry, a copy stand with a special cradle for items that would only open at a certain degree. So this particular item she's working with we had to shoot one side at a time. And then it's later electronically collated and file renamed and all of that. The lighting you can see is set up to the side so that we light up the gutter and there are no shadows presented in the image. And the glass you see there is not putting any pressure at all on the item. It's just there to keep the page as flat as possible so that in case it does lift up slightly it'll meet the glass and gives us a nice shot. Next one. Okay, here we have also a book scanner in-house that's a dual camera system equipped with 60-megapixel camera backs. And this has a built-in cradle along with a rare book modulator that works in conjunction with that cradle. So as the glass comes down, the cradle moves with it so there's no weight or pressure put on any one item. One click is two shots in this case. So we're shooting both sides simultaneously. You can see the image to the right, there's two screens and two processors that run this device. And up close here to the left is the item under glass which is again no pressure at all. I didn't do that. Did you do that? >> Hirad Dinavari: Want to go back? >> Domenico Sergi: No. So here then we use our IXG-100 which is a 100-megapixel camera back. Courtney was setting up the genealogy scroll here that Tamera was just talking about. After treatment it came to us, and given its size we scanned it in different sections, keeping it in order. Okay, next. And that's the scroll. So as each image was produced, we'd have different sections starting with the one on the left being the first shot, the one on the right being second, with a good amount of overlap in each image that allows us to electronically stitch beside them and do a nice seamless stitch to it. So it's a continuous flow. And below it is the entire scroll in digital form. >> Okay, next? Okay, Dave Reser is now going to speak about cataloging metadata and the joys of getting all the information coded in for the records. >> David Reser: I've been asked to do a lot of things in my 30 years at the Library. But one of them is today the challenge of trying to make metadata interesting, when in the context of my colleagues doing conservation and scanning, it's not that metadata isn't important. It's the most important part of this process. And so we help with this by the identification of the materials that are going to be scanned and then handing those off to our bibliographic access colleagues who actually do the cataloging. We have one representative today, Michael Chyet who did a fair number of the content here, as well as Alan Mayberry who has since retired. And he did the rest of them. So we have a picture here of Michael working on cataloging some manuscripts. And the slide -- Michelle? Thanks. >> Hirad Dinavari: Okay, next one. >> David Reser: The metadata work also involves people like Sam Manavong who we've identified several times now who -- we have to sign digital ID's to these things so that as they go through the whole process we of course know which article we're talking about at any one time. Because most of us in this process don't recognize Persian from Arabic, from anything else. So Sam helps us out by signing digital ID's, setting up storage space where the files will go on the servers once the things are scanned themselves. And then we work with lots of spreadsheets that we share amongst ourselves. Go to the next slide. Just an example of that slide. Some spreadsheets that we share as we go. And then it all results in once we have the digital content files in the proper directories and the catalog records already made, then the magic really happens where a process merges together the content files and the metadata and presents them on our website for that digital collection. And Hirad and people in Ahmed do have to do a lot of additional work to identify, "Gee, what are the splashiest, prettiest ones to put at the top of the screen?" What is for each item particularly -- and not so much appropriate for manuscripts that are usually a single page. But when there are multiple pages, what's the most interesting page to display with that content? And so here we work with some of the people Hirad identified, particularly Christ Demar in our digital collections management services who works with us and with the developers in our Office of the Chief Information Officer to make this presentation. >> Hirad Dinavari: Okay, now I would go to the question farm but unfortunately we are running out of time. So I'm going to start with the conversation and we'll do questions at the very end. So hold onto your questions for all the lovely speakers. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone, for your presentations. For taking the time to do this. Thank you. [ Applause ] Thank you so much. And now we're going to have the head of the Near East Section, Dr. Anchi Hoh and our next speakers, Lee Ann Potter and Michael Chyet have a little conversation about what you see on the screen. Teaching with manuscripts, yes, and the Library can help. >> Anchi Hoh: Thank you, Hirad. >> Hirad Dinavari: You're very welcome. >> Anchi Hoh: Good morning, everyone. Hi. Thank you for being with us. And thank you, Hirad, for introduction. So -- This morning you have already heard about how these Persian manuscripts can contribute to the study of culture, literature, art history and so on, so forth. And you also have learned about how these manuscripts are being digitized and preserved at the Library of Congress. And we heard from that first panel discussion that there is a huge level, high level of interest in applying these manuscripts to education, particularly 8-12. And I know we have some specialists here who have been really very eager to try to address that question, to have a conversation with you about that particular topic. So this particular conversation is about teaching with manuscripts, yes, the library can help. Now not everyone knows Persian, so how do we do that? How do we, you know, embark on this effort of promoting manuscripts in education and outreach efforts? So we're going to talk about that. I would like first of all to introduce our two panelists, and I think it's important to tell you a little bit about their backgrounds so then it will make sense for you to hear their conversations. Lee Ann Potter who is the director of the Office of Learning and Innovation at the Library of Congress. She leads a talented team committed to developing engaging educational programs and materials based on primary sources. And before coming to the Library, she was a -- she directed educational and volunteer programs at NARA, National Archive and Records Administration, for 16 years. And prior to that, she worked at the Smithsonian on a project to build museum/school partnerships. And prior to that she was a high school social studies teacher. Lee Ann has published very widely on the topic of using primary sources in professional education. So we are so happy to have you, Lee Ann. And Michael to my left -- Dr. Michael Chyet, he is a cataloger at the Library of Congress. And he catalogs books in Middle Eastern languages including Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Syriac. He is also a linguist and a folklorist. And he offers courses in Kurmanji and Sorani Kurdish via Skype. So the first edition of his Kurmanji/English dictionary appeared in 2003, and I understand that the updated edition is coming out soon. And Michael has also published widely and presented a lot of papers at symposiums and conferences on the topic of Middle Eastern language learning. So we're so happy to have you both here. And since our time is brief, let's dive in. Okay. So the very first question, let's tackle this basic question. So what is the Persian language and who speaks it? Maybe Michael and Lee Ann, you have comments? >> Lee Ann Potter: You tell us what it is, I'll tell you who's speaking it. >> Michael Chyet: Can you hear me? So when we use the term Persian and English, it's very general. It's spoken in several countries and it's called different things in those different countries. So in Iran it's called Farsi. Iran used to be called Persia. And so Persian came from that. And the province of Fars where the city of Shiraz is, is where that name comes from. So in Iran it's called Farsi. In Afghanistan it's generally called Dari, the court language. And both in Afghanistan and in Iran it's written in the Arabic script. Now in central Asia, in Tajikistan and in some of the major cities in Uzbekistan, since the Soviet period it's written in Cyrillic script and there it's called Tajik. So if somebody is speaking Tajik and someone is speaking Persian, they can generally understand each other but they wouldn't necessarily be able to read each other's writing if they don't know each other's alphabet. And we have this situation also with Azerbaijani and also with Kurdish where in different countries the languages are written in different alphabets. >> Lee Ann Potter: Yeah. Everything Michael is saying just makes me grin because there's so much that he knows that we don't know. And in the course of preparing for this, every conversation we had, I would go home and I would talk to my 16-year-old and I would tell her, I would say, "Hey, did you know?" And her reaction was, "I had no idea. Actually that's kind of interesting." And yeah, it's really interesting. So today about 500,000 individuals in the United States are able to speak some variety of Persian. What Michael was saying about the written language is just so fascinating. But beyond that, as far as numbers go, around the world, around 110 million individuals around the world are speaking Persian. And when we started looking at these materials and talking about, what is their value in a K-12 classroom? Well, we have to accept that well chances are good the value isn't necessarily from the get-go the language. Simply because the language could present a barrier. And then we delve in deeper into these conversations and I'll let you keep going. >> Anchi Hoh: Oh sure. >> Lee Ann Potter: I know you want to keep going and I want to show my picture. >> Anchi Hoh: Wonderful, yes. We're really eager to see that. >> Lee Ann Potter: Not that one, but it's okay. >> Anchi Hoh: All right. So now we kind of -- go ahead. >> Lee Ann Potter: Yeah, that's the one. >> Anchi Hoh: Oh now, don't show it yet. >> Lee Ann Potter: But we'll get there. >> Anchi Hoh: We'll get there. >> Lee Ann Potter: We'll get there. >> Anchi Hoh: We prepared quite a bit for this conversation and throughout the discussions it was every session we met was very exciting. So we're very eager to talk about this with you, to have a conversation about this particular topic. Now Michael, your background is so intriguing. You are a cataloger but you're also a language instructor. You're a linguist and folklorist. >> Michael Chyet: And folk dancer. >> Anchi Hoh: And folk dancer. And very importantly, we have you here because you are intimately involved in the Persian language digitization project. And you have cataloged a lot of these materials, manuscripts and I know there are more to come. Lithographs and early prints. So you know, wearing so many different identities, how do you -- how do you see -- what is your experience in using such primary materials in your teaching, in your language instruction and also as a cataloger? Can you share a little bit of your insight with us? >> Michael Chyet: Well first of all I want to say that what Alan Mayberry and I do -- are you going to cough or am I going to talk? Make up your mind right now. What Alan Mayberry and I do would not be possible without the help of some of the native speakers with whom we work. Hussein Yunesi from Afghanistan and Fate Stewart who is a native speaker of Persian but grew up in Baghdad and so she's fluent in both Arabic and Persian. And very often without their help we would have been unable to do as accurate a job as we did. And they very often go unnoticed. So I just want to put the focus on them for a little bit. So examples of how working in the Library has enhanced my own work, my own research. I can give you an example from, well, working on my Kurdish dictionary. We got a book which was in French. It was an ethnography of a Yazidi village in Armenia and it had pictures. And it talked about something called a star, not the English word star. It's probably from the Arabic word sitar meaning to hide something. But in the Middle East in general, when people get married the couple are given as a gift a sumptuous pile of handwoven quilts and cushions, and those are proudly displayed in the salon, in the living room. Where the guests are entertained when they come. And this in Kurdish is called a star I found out from that book. Because it had pictures of it and everything. I thought, "You know, I don't have that word in my dictionary. I would like to include it but I don't have enough information yet." So just by coincidence, about six months later there appeared on my desk this book which the Armenian cataloger Paul Krego had left there. It was published in Armenia in Armenian and in Kurdish in Cyrillic script. Kurdish in three different alphabets at least. So it was versions of what in Turkish is called "kiralu." In Armenian they say "giralo." Same basic story. So I started reading one of the stories in there just out of curiosity. And on the first page it's talking about how this person had been given a jewel and she wanted to hide it so where did she hide it? In the star. The exact same thing that I had -- so here I had an actual use of it. I wouldn't have understood what it was talking about if I hadn't seen that earlier book. So then I knew that I could add it to my dictionary and actually have examples of its usage and bibliographic examples of where it occurs and stuff like that. And where would I have seen these things if I hadn't been working here at the Library? I wouldn't have known of their existence. So this is just one little example of how what I do in my daily work at the Library and my scholarship just sort of flow in and out of each other. I found my niche. >> Anchi Hoh: That's great. And also on the screen you can see a page from this book, the book of Indian castes and king's folk [foreign name]. It's actually in the Asian Collection, but it's in Persian. And we wanted to showcase this particular page, this particular piece because it shows you the diversity of Persian culture. And that also speaks to what Michael was saying earlier about the definition of Persian and how widely it's spoken. And I know Michael, you have another example about [foreign name] that you worked on as one of the manuscripts that you have cataloged. And do you have some anecdotes to share? >> Michael Chyet: Well, one of the Persian translations of it is called [foreign name]. But for one thing it's apparently originally [inaudible]. So it's originally from India and then it was translated into Persian -- well, into Arabic by [foreign name], then into Persian as well. Well, [foreign name] and [foreign name]. So we have these stories throughout the Middle East. My favorite story is the story called in Arabic [foreign name] The Monkey and The Tortoise, the turtle. And do you want me to tell it briefly? Do we have time? >> Anchi Hoh: Yeah, sure, briefly. >> Lee Ann Potter: I want to interrupt just long enough to explain where this conversation began. We were meeting in my office. We were talking about what is it about Persian that we already know even if we don't think we know anything? And we were talking about things like there are words in Persian that we all know. Words like [foreign word]. I was like, "Ooh, give me more of those." >> Michael Chyet: Cummerbund. >> Lee Ann Potter: Cummerbund. There were more. And I think you know where we're going. So we were talking about -- >> Michael Chyet: Orange. >> Lee Ann Potter: Orange. And then we started talking about, "Okay, above and beyond the words in Persian that we're familiar with, what other places or what other elements of Persian could be very relatable in a K12 classroom?" So Michael started telling these fabulous riddles. And who doesn't love a good riddle? And then he started telling me these folk stories and explained that a lot of the folk stories that he has stumbled across in these collections are from materials that are separated by distance and separated by time, but they're the same story. And then we started getting into these fabulous conversations that really were all about, you know, the fellowship of the human spirit. And with that I'll let you tell your good story, or you can start with a riddle. [ Laughter ] >> Michael Chyet: Well, several things come to mind, but instead of all that, I want you to look around at these six arches. >> Lee Ann Potter: That's good. >> Michael Chyet: You see that each of them has two signs of the Zodiac, if you look around. >> Lee Ann Potter: That's cool. >> Michael Chyet: So I wanted -- this is something which I thought particularly for kids would be -- they'd get a kick out of. So there are all these different calendars floating around. There's the Gregorian calendar is what people in the west are most familiar with. There's the Islamic calendar. There's the [foreign name], the lunar calendar which is very -- which is used, well everywhere in the Islamic world, but particularly in the Arabic-speaking Muslim world. And then in Iran and Afghanistan they have [foreign name], so the solar calendar. And the new year's for that is March 21st, the beginning of the spring equinox. And what else begins on March 21st? >> Lee Ann Potter: Spring. >> Michael Chyet: Spring [inaudible] and the horoscopes, the Zodiac. Because the Iranian solar calendar is exactly the horoscopes. So for instance I'm a Leo. August 2nd happens to be my birthday. But the period that the Zodiac sign Leo covers is July 23rd till August 22nd. That is a month in the Iranian solar calendar. So I mean, people are familiar with the horoscope, but they didn't know in general that it is exactly the Iranian solar calendar. I think that makes it seem more familiar, less strange. >> Anchi Hoh: You can actually see a lot of these discussions about Zodiac or astrology, astronomy in these manuscripts. >> Michael Chyet: When you have the dates -- when you have to date the calendar, if you're lucky enough to date the manuscript or the lithograph for that matter. If you're lucky enough to have something in the [inaudible] at the end, possibly on the title page at the beginning too, it may have a date. But one point that I want to make is the names of those months in Iran are different than the names in Afghanistan. In Iran for instance you have [foreign word] or [foreign name], [foreign name], et cetera. Those go back to pre-Islamic ancient Iranian culture. In Afghanistan they're actually called the Arabic name -- Arabic, not the Persian [foreign name], but the Arabic name for that sign of the Zodiac. So for instance I'm a Leo. In Iran I would be called a Mordadi. Mordad is the month July 23rd to August 22nd. In Afghanistan it's Assad which is the Arabic word for Leo. >> Lee Ann Potter: Leo, yep. >> Michael Chyet: And I found it over there. It's that one. >> Anchi Hoh: Yeah, so actually Lee Ann was explaining a little bit why we were talking about [foreign name]. Because a lot of these folklores actually that we know today or you know, as children, they are from these cultures, Persian cultures and such. You know, the one that you're going to explain -- >> Michael Chyet: Do you still want me to tell that story? >> Yes. >> Michael Chyet: Okay. >> Anchi Hoh: I think so. Yeah. >> Michael Chyet: Well, since I've already put my foot in my mouth and I promised it. So [foreign name], The Monkey and The Tortoise. So the story goes that a monkey had left its home and had climbed up into a tree right next to a body of water, a pond. And he kept shaking it and it turns out it was a fig tree. And without realizing it, he was knocking figs down into the water. And there was a [foreign word], there was a tortoise there who was eating them and was very grateful. He wanted him to keep shaking. So anyway, they struck up a friendship and they became friends. Well, the monkey's wife was jealous and when he came back home, she told him that -- No, wait a minute. No, I'm sorry. It's the tortoise's wife who was jealous. She told him that the doctor had prescribed her the heart of a monkey. And she wanted to get rid of the monkey because she was jealous. She wanted her husband all to herself. So he came back and he felt a little bit sheepish. How's he going to say this? So he said, "I would like to invite you home. So climb on my back and I'll take you back home." So they're on their way in the water, and the tortoise says sort of sheepishly, "Well, one of the reasons that I invited you home is because my wife has been prescribed a monkey heart." And the monkey said, "Oh, I wish you had told me. I left my heart up in that tree." [ Laughter ] "So, you know, unless we go back and get it, I won't be able to help you." So they went back and the monkey climbed off the back of the tortoise, climbed up into the tree. And of course he wasn't going to go back. He said, "Sorry." So I've always loved that story, and I remember years ago -- I can't remember whether it was here at the Library of Congress or whether it was when I was at UC Berkeley working in the library there. But I saw a [foreign name] version of this for children. >> Lee Ann Potter: Oh my God. >> Michael Chyet: You know, it was that story. >> Anchi Hoh: That is lovely. >> Michael Chyet: I think it's even got an [inaudible] type number, which I should have checked but I don't remember. >> Anchi Hoh: There you go. So with that, I have a question for Lee Ann. >> Lee Ann Potter: Yeah. >> Anchi Hoh: So manuscripts are not just old ancient texts, you know, from children or from K-12 students' perspective. >> Lee Ann Potter: Right. >> Anchi Hoh: Right? They're so much fun. There's so much in there that they can learn from. So my question for you, Lee Ann, is that as a former teacher, school teacher of history, geography, social sciences, what is your reaction to these primary sources such as the Persian manuscripts? And how do teachers -- how can they approach these foreign language materials to use them in classroom? >> Lee Ann Potter: Yeah. >> Anchi Hoh: So that's the question we've been dying to know. >> Lee Ann Potter: Well thank you for asking. So much to say and so little time. On the screen, I really want to direct your attention to this screen. The office that I direct here at the library, we receive funding from Congress for the teaching with primary sources program that allows us to distribute grant dollars to organizations that are developing professional development opportunities for teachers as well as curriculum. And one of our partners, an organization that has been a partner of the libraries for quite some time, is the Cotin Family Foundation in Los Angeles. And they do a lot of work with the UCLA Lab School. And were in LA for a meeting a number of years ago and spent an afternoon at the Lab School. And I spent most of my afternoon with the six-year-olds. And I was really excited about what they were doing because they were working with digitized images of illuminative manuscripts from the 13th century that were in Latin. I thought, "You know, when I was six I don't remember working with illuminative manuscripts." But what if I had? So I got very excited about what this particular teacher was doing and what these students were up to. So he started by using a large screen in his classroom that was actually a whiteboard. And he was projecting an image of one of these illuminative manuscripts on the board. And he was inviting the children to come up and identify elements of the page that caught their attention. And then he had them do a similar activity by themselves. And his point was that there is value in these manuscripts, not just by what they say, but by what else they can teach us. Where do they draw our attention? What is interesting or unique about the color and the composition? And so he was using these manuscripts with six-year-olds to simply hone in on skills related to paying attention to details. Brilliant. Absolutely fabulous. And similarly, I think whenever we're thinking about the value of primary source materials, we need to recognize that their value is not just in their content. Because again, that fabulous story about the monkey and the tortoise is terrific and it's in the volumes. But unless you can read Persian, and depending on what alphabet you can read Persian in, you may or may not have access to the content of that story. However, because these manuscripts have value beyond their content -- in other words, what else contributes to knowledge? It's not just the content knowledge we have. It's the skills that we have. It's our ability to think and ask questions and our creativity. And that's another thing that these manuscripts allow us to really emphasize. So when this collection went online, I got really excited about it, just like I do with every collection that goes online. I start poking around trying to find, okay, what is it about this collection that we should be highlighting for teachers either through our teaching with the Library of Congress blog or through one of our teacher workshops or through an article that we're writing for a professional journal? And I found -- or just to capture the attention again of my 16-year-old. So I identified just for this morning four items that are part of this larger collection. And as you know, this collection includes something like 155 complete manuscripts. And I'm showing you four pages. So I'm not even beginning to scratch the surface of what's in the collection. But I'm going to play a little game with you guys. So if you look at the screen and you look at the object on the far left, what about it catches your eye? [ Inaudible ] What about the margins? [ Inaudible ] Yeah, excellent. Excellent. Okay, so you notice there's different ink. It looks like the handwriting might be a little bit different, plus you're writing in the margin. How many of you have ever written in the margin of anything? Do you need to know what this says to know that you have something in common with the people involved in this manuscript that was created more than 200 years ago? And that's another point I want to make, is that when we're working with primary source materials with students, it's not just about the content. It's not just about the skills. There's something sort of transcendent, and that is we are making connections with people who came before us. And so the conversation earlier today about the value of these materials in terms of just humanity, and just the organization of this morning's conversation, I love that our scholars help us understand why these materials are important for humanity and for knowledge. I love that our colleagues who work in conservation know how to preserve these materials so that they can perpetuate. I love that my colleagues who work in digitization and who work in metadata, Dave, important metadata, enable these materials to be accessible. Because I really see it as sort of a circle. That if we make these materials accessible and we can introduce six-year-olds to them, they're going to become those scholars who help perpetuate and make these materials relevant and existent for generations to come. And I really believe that if we introduce like a six-year-old to the image of the elephant -- by the way, that item, the estimate is that it's from either the 17th or the 18th century. Fabulous. You know, what child isn't drawn to something that has something that is also familiar to them? Likewise, the next object, what caught my eye about both of them was the format. I am a list-maker. And I really like thinking that maybe one of the reasons I keep lists is because I like to organize information. And maybe that's what the people who created those texts were doing too. And maybe that's why the text is in columns. Maybe it has something to do with the organization of information. I don't know. Because I don't read it. But that's where recognizing that these materials exist and that there are people who can. And maybe they can help me make sense. In fact, when I was finding my objects, I had to send a couple to Michael to ask him, "Hey, what does this mean?" Because one of them was like chart and it reminded me of a Bingo card. He assured me they were not playing Bingo, by the way. But again, it got me thinking about what is it about just the object itself that's drawing my attention. And just one last thing because I know -- >> Anchi Hoh: Oh, please. >> Lee Ann Potter: If we can capture students' attention and tap into the things that motivate them and help them see things that connect them to other people, I think we are doing a service for them that goes way above and beyond simply teaching them content. And just so if you're curious, the very last object, the blue object from 1383 from Tehran, it's the book of Psalms written in Persian. Who knew? Anyway, all right. Keep going. >> Anchi Hoh: That's amazing. So I wanted to also make a comment in relation to Lee Ann's remarks. In the African and Middle Eastern Division we run a Four Corners of the World blog. And we showcase the collections we have in our, you know, in our beautiful, wonderful collections. And so we write blogs very often. And we have been working with the Office of Learning and Innovations to figure out how to translate or transform these materials for classroom use. And we learned you know, along the way that Lee Ann's office and her staff are able to take our primary sources and turn them into useful teaching materials. So they will write blogs that will showcase perhaps one image or two from our collections, and then pose questions to teachers to help them sort of provoke thoughts from students. So that is a wonderful experience. And the other thing I want to mention is that Lee Ann has been instrumental in introducing the Omar Ibn Said collection to high school students. You've heard this morning from Dr. Mary Jane Deeb about the documentary videos that these high school students made which received over 23,000 views. They're so excited about it and I know the number is still growing. And Lee Ann, would you like to talk a little bit about that experience? >> Lee Ann Potter: Oh, it was just great. We were brought into the conversation about the collection early on. And the discussions were about, how can we present these materials and make them of interest to young audiences? And we asked, to what extent could we involve young people in the early stages of making the collection accessible? In other words, could we bring kids in before the materials were even available online? And the answer was, sure. Which was exciting. So we worked with two local high schools and brought high school students who were -- I mean, you know, high schools today, journalism classes are not like what they once were. These kids are really doing some terrific video production. And what they did was the kids came to the Library on a number of occasions, met with colleagues in different divisions, had a chance to see objects from the collection. And they did create documentaries based on their experience not only in learning about the life of Omar Ibn Said but also the process that the Library went through to make those materials accessible. So it was really quite exciting and of course the students' reactions were fabulous as far as we were concerned. Because they kept saying things like, "I've never liked history." And we're like, "Ah! How can you say that?" But then they do now. And it was because they had a real intimate experience working with collections and having the chance to -- I wish Anne were still here because I loved her question this morning that there is something magical about the original. And having that chance to engage with it really made a huge difference for those kids. >> Anchi Hoh: Yeah. So there are so many different ways of engaging students through teacher or really through hands-on experience, getting students involved early in exploring these materials and in producing a story told by themselves. And so I think materials like, you know, the Omar Ibn Said collection or the Persian language materials can all be transformed that way into useful purposes. As we're wrapping up, I would like to ask you, Lee Ann and Michael, do you have any additional thoughts that you would like to make, to add? >> Lee Ann Potter: I just want to say that again, when we introduce students to these materials, I really do believe that they have extraordinary powers to engage students. Because they pique their interest and make them want to know more. And that's really our objective. You know, I mentioned earlier that that activity with the six-year-olds, getting students to look closely at details and then letting them reflect on those details and make connections to other things that they know. And then ultimately those observations are going to lead to questions. And hopefully the questions are going to lead to young people wanting to do research and wanting to pick the brains of the scholars, and then wanting to become scholars themselves. Recognizing that these materials are available to them is something that we absolutely have a responsibility to do. >> Anchi Hoh: Great. And Michael, last thought? >> Michael Chyet: Again, this is something which might pique the interest of kids in school. So in the west we generally think of a binary opposition. Yes and no. Are you coming to the party we're throwing this weekend? Yes or no. Of course there's, "I really don't want to but my mother is making me." It's basically yes and no. In the Middle East in general there's a third possibility [foreign phrase], "If God wants." I remember I lived in an Arab village in Israel for two years in the early 80's. And when we were first there, we had a get-together and we asked somebody, "Are you going to be coming?" And this person said, [foreign phrase]. But really in the Middle East there are three options. And somebody who is for instance a diplomat dealing with the Middle East has got to take that into account. I mean, it's a different cultural view of the world view. And whenever you talk about the future, like I'm going to Europe this summer, they'll always say [foreign phrase]. When you're talking about the future, you have to add an [foreign phrase]. Hebrew has a parallel incidentally, [foreign phrase] which in Yiddish is [foreign phrase]. But it's not -- I don't think that in the Jewish world people think of it as three separate options like yes, no and [foreign phrase]. But it's nice to know that there is a parallel between Hebrew and Arabic there. >> Anchi Hoh: Absolutely. And you know, I can smell another opportunity coming as students get to know more about these materials. They also get to interact with our specialists, you know, so they learn about the diversity of cultures through manuscripts. They also get to learn the intricacies of culture through interacting with our specialists. I know that we have already taken too much time, so I would like to thank you specialists, our guest speakers, Lee Ann Potter and Michael Chyet. And thank you for your attention. I'm going to turn the table back to Hirad. [ Applause ] >> Hirad Dinavari: I would like to echo that as well and thank everyone for coming. I especially want to thank Lee Ann for staying through the whole thing. As well, Michael, you're very humble. He's done some of our manuscripts, all 600 lithographs. He's now almost finished with the early imprints. So he's doing a lot for this project. And thank you for working with us all along. [ Inaudible ] There you go. Long and short, it's really nice to have you. This whole program has been filmed. If there is any questions that anyone feels that they have to ask, let's take one or two questions. Because I don't want all the panelists to feel -- yes, Amy? [ Inaudible ] Absolutely. So we can have -- now that people have met, this is a great opportunity to get emails and addresses and numbers and network. Any other questions, burning questions for anyone of the speakers? Conservation, cataloging, metadata for digitization. Okay. Okay. Okay, good. So again I want to also say thank you to Sam. Sam, please stand up. You've been very humble. He has been with me -- [ Applause ] He has been on the project from the get-go and in many ways he's done so much of the legwork on the background or the back end. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for coming. [ Applause ]