History of the Project

y serendipity, I encountered in 1999 the illuminated Slavic medieval manuscript at the Summer School in Digitization of Medieval Manuscripts in Sofia, Bulgaria. The manuscript beauty the dedication of the scribes and artists enlightened me, a native Bulgarian now living and studying in the U.S., and changed my life. Enchanted, I felt obligated to preserve the deeply hidden, deteriorating, and forgotten manuscripts.

I completed the Masters degree in Library and Information Science, concentrating on digital preservation. A fall 2000 search of the Web produced no representation of Slavic medieval manuscripts and images. A return to Bulgaria that November included presentation of a paper: "Virtual Scriptorium of Slavic Medieval Manuscripts." I donated a computer to the Historical and Archival Church Institute so that scholars might view the manuscripts electronically instead of handling their fragile and disintegrated corpuses.

In fall, 2001 I spent three months working with the HACI collection and digitized many images, presented here systematically to give you a holistic view of the 15th to 17th centuries. I believe that you will enjoy these different Church service manuscripts and their ornamentations. With the images, you will view my ongoing research on topics such as Bulgarian medieval libraries, Digitization of Slavic manuscripts, and case studies in progress.

Although I have dedicated my life to preserving this forgotten chapter of Western Civilization, my efforts are nothing compared to the thousands of unknown scribes and artists who braved cold, starvation, exhaustion, and physical danger to create these precious pages and thus illuminate our souls today. We stand as children on their shoulders. Let us appreciate the pearls of their divinely inspired human genius. If you feel moved to assist in the efforts to preserve these images, please contact me or contribute to the HACI Conservation Fund.

I am deeply indebted to Dr. Hristo Temelski, Director of HACI, and to Dr. Predrag Matejic, Director of Hilandar Research Center, the world's largest microfilm collection of Slavic medieval manuscripts, housed at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio for assistance with my research.

With much respect and appreciation,

Tatiana Nikolova-Houston, M.S., M.S., M.L.I.S.
March, 2002

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Last Updated: April 29, 2002