Libraries of Russia: International research conference “The Fifth Zagrebin readings. Codex Sinaiticus. Manuscripts in Modern Information Environment”

Since 2005, the National Library of Russia (NLR) has held annual international research conferences "Zagrebin Readings", named in honour of the outstanding scholar of Slavonic literatures and paleographer Viacheslav Zagrebin (1942-2004), who was a former head of the NLR's Old Russian Manuscripts Section and Curator of Slavic Manuscripts.

The Fifth International research conference “Zagrebin readings” devoted to a major international project on the Codex Sinaiticus will take place on 12-13 November in the National Library of Russia in Saint-Petersburg.

The project aims to create a facsimile of the mid-fourth century manuscript, and reproduce it in digital form. This will provide a virtual re-unification of the four portions of the manuscript which are now held in England, Germany, Egypt, and Russia and give world-wide access to one of the most important cultural treasures.

The sessions will discuss a wide range of project-related problems. They primarily include the studying early hand-written Christian scriptures and features of the Sinai manuscript tradition. Proposed topics also cover issues relating to source studies, paleography, codicology, and textual scholarship, as well as the language and decoration of manuscripts produced on Mount Sinai in Greek, Arabic, Georgian and Slavonic (both Glagolitic and Cyrillic). Palimpsests will be considered in terms of computer-aided reading and analysis. The emphasis will be placed on ways in which early manuscript codices appear in the modern information environment.

A discussion of the Codex Sinaiticus Project Website will hopefully encourage an interesting debate about ways of digital representation of manuscripts on the Internet, the safety of digitization, digital archiving, and the social importance of promoting projects on cultural heritage as well as other related topics.

Manuscript curators, specialists on Oriental, Byzantine and Slavic cultures working in such fields as history, philology, art history, the restoration and the digitization of manuscript collections are invited to this conference.

The exhibition "Codex Sinaiticus fragments of the NLR’s funds" will take place during the conference.

Using various sources, the Library's Manuscripts Department will show the fragments of the Codex Sinaiticus. The exhibits will include some interesting old manuscripts from the collections gathered by Archbishop Porfiry Uspensky, Constantine Thischendorf, and the Society of Amateurs of Ancient Literature in Saint Petersburg (palimpsests, fragments of early Greek and Slavic manuscripts), and relevant biographical material on the collectors.