The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) at Saint John’s University a $651,000 grant to expand online access to its manuscript images from endangered and inaccessible collections around the world.

Over the next three years, HMML plans a comprehensive redevelopment of its online catalog, OLIVER, already the world’s largest online resource for manuscript studies. OLIVER 2.0 will significantly improve the quality of both past and future cataloging, invite contributions from users of HMML’s digitized manuscripts, and make HMML’s resources more easily discoverable by digital humanities projects at other institutions. This project builds upon almost two decades of partnership between HMML and the Foundation to develop ever-wider access to manuscript collections that are otherwise unavailable to researchers. A grant from the Mellon Foundation in the 1990s supported creation of OLIVER, and more recent grants have enabled thousands of manuscripts from endangered collections in the Middle East and Eastern Europe to be cataloged and shared with scholars throughout the world. This latest grant will support both the rebuilding of the digital platform for OLIVER and further cataloging of manuscripts from HMML’s projects in several countries where manuscript collections are at risk or inaccessible.