Digitization of Rare Islamic Books and Manuscripts
Digitization of Rare Islamic Books and Manuscripts
Maktabah Mujaddidiyah (www.maktabah.org) runs a project to digitize some rare and valuable Islamic books, which are otherwise hard to access. This not only helps to preserve those books, they also become easily accessible through the Internet. The books are published on various websites including www.archive.org and www.maktabah.org and are free to read and download.
The work of scanning and publishing the books is volunteered by a few friends. We have a small book scanner that was donated by a dear friend for this purpose. Until now, we have digitized more than 400 Islamic books and magazines (about 100,000 pages), a few of them before having the new book scanner.
Some of the books are so rare, even their publishers and authors did not possess a single copy of their book when it was published online on Maktabah Mujaddidiyah. Some rare yet valuable manuscripts were acquired with much effort and published electronically.
We have been in contact with some bookstores who have promised to get us to some of the very rare books which are almost impossible to acquire otherwise. We also have contacts within some of the big libraries and museums to acquire some books which are only available in them.
We are in the process of expanding our project and we need to buy more precious Islamic books for digitization and online publication. There are other indirect costs related to the project, including, re-binding of books (some books need to be free of hard binding to the complete text is visible), postage of books, photocopies of manuscripts, etc.
Therefore, we request our well wishers and lovers of traditional Islamic books to donate to this noble cause for preserving and propagating true Islamic knowledge. The amount raised here will only be used to cover the costs of digitization project, with the actual scanning work being volunteered and free of cost.
You can visit www.maktabah.org and read our previously scanned books for free.
In the last, we express our gratitude to all those who have already donated to this noble cause and helped us in our on-going efforts to preserve and propagate sacred knowledge.