open access goes papal

Quoting from a TA article in The New Yorker, January 3, 2011, pp. 24-30: "Far more important for the many scholars who have no ready access to the library, the process of digitizing images from the Vat’s collection of illuminated manuscripts had begun–an undertaking that is very much in keeping, in ways that Nicholas V couldn’t have imagined, with that Pope’s dream of “the common convenience of the learned.” “A decision was taken,” Cardinal Mejía went on, making use of the curious passive construction that, I’d noticed, he favored when speaking of events that occurred during his tenure, “to digitalize the miniatures”–the hand-painted illuminations in the manuscripts–”so people could have access to the miniatures without seeing the manuscripts, which we try to keep as much as possible in their own places, because they’re so precious. So now the Vatican has a site for these images, and you can click on an image and see the illuminations. There’s access for anybody.” ..."