News from the CDLI: Kalamazoo Valley Museum cuneiform collection in CDLI

Kalamazoo Valley Museum cuneiform collection in CDLI

The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), in partnership with the Kalamazoo Valley Museum (KVM) located in Kalamazoo, Michigan--established in 1881 in the city’s library basement and since 1991 operated by the Kalamazoo Valley Community College--is pleased to announce the addition of new digital content to its web offerings.


In 2007, Andrea Seri, then at Harvard University, published an edition of the collection (CDLJ 2007/1), but, due to funding constraints, we could not have the physical artifacts imaged according to CDLI’s fatcross standards. Last month, UCLA graduate student Michael Heinle was able to scan the 61 Kalamazoo text artifacts as part of a digitization mission through Missouri, Indiana and Michigan, and the  results of the KVM effort have now been added to CDLI pages, viewable here.

The imaging and image processing were made possible by funding from  the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and are part of the on-going mission of CDLI to ensure the long-term digital preservation of ancient inscriptions on cuneiform tablets, and, in furtherance of cuneiform research, to provide free global access to all available text artifact data. 


For the CDLI and the KVM: 
Robert K. Englund, UCLA
Paula L. Metzner, Asst. Director of Collections, KVM