Hebrew Palaeography Project
	Established in 1965 by Profs. Malachi Beit-Arié and Colette Sirat in conjunction with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), this project seeks to characterize medieval Hebrew manuscripts in terms of their orthography, technical and physical characteristics, dates and provenance. Its goal is to provide basic tools to researchers and to establish a systematic typology of the manuscripts. The researchers have studied over 6,500 manuscripts to date, and all the details have been entered into a computerized database comprising 700 fields. The file for each manuscript includes a sample alphabet of its characters to aid in orthographic comparison. The researchers have also scanned in digital format several thousand manuscripts kept in libraries in Israel, the United States, France, the U.K., Russia, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Hungary, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Egypt.
	The project has published ten books to date. These include the three-part, seven volume series Manuscrits Médiévaux en Characteres Hebraїques Portant des Indications de Date Jusqu’à 1540 (Hebrew and French; Part IV is nearing completion), two volumes of Specimens of Mediaeval Hebrew Scripts (a third volume is in progress), Hebrew Codicology (English), a Collection of Hebrew Papyri (French), and three parts of the large-format Codices Hebraicis Litteris Exarati quo Tempore Scripti Fuerint Exhibentes (Hebrew and French). The research team also provides assistance to the many scholars who approach it each year for help in identifying manuscripts.   This past year the researchers examined and documented forty manuscripts from the Vatican Library. All the manuscript data, after clarification, checking and correction, were added to the project’s computerized database, which continues to be developed, updated and improved. The ability to variously extract, transform and combine data in adjacent on-screen windows, along with sample pictures from the original manuscripts, has created a powerful and innovative new tool for typological and manuscript studies. Digital scans of one photograph from each manuscript at extra-high resolution permit detailed morphological research on the scripts employed.