Many Armenian manuscripts were destroyed during the centuries of our history. Many of those which survived these destructions, especially the ones preserved outside Armenia, are not maintained and kept up to the standards of today’s technology.

More importantly only a small percentage of these manuscripts have been examined and even a smaller percentage of those have been published in Armenian. Consequently, only a few of these manuscripts are known to Armenian and non-Armenian reading scholars and the general public. This is especially the case when it comes to manuscripts of Armenian commentaries on the Bible, biblical exegesis, Armenian spirituality and mysticism.

 

Concerned about this situation, in their regular meeting under the chairmanship of Mr. Richard Dabagian on Thursday, October 13, the members of the Board of Directors of the GAÏDZ foundation focused on a variety of ways to enhance research utilizing Armenian manuscripts.

They listened to a report presented by board member, Armen Meyer, JD, concerning the latest on the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology that converts images containing written or printed text into a machine-readable format. Based on Mr. Meyer’s suggestion, the board unanimously voted to collaborate with leading OCR research companies to develop a software that is capable of distinguishing Armenian alphabet characters in handwritten texts copied on manuscripts.  

 

This will tremendously expedite the time it takes to read the Armenian text in a manuscript and to input it electronically. In its turn, this will then enable scholars and the public to read the contents of these manuscripts and conduct research on the subjects associated with the contents of these manuscripts.

 

With the latest technology available online, GAÏDZ aims at making the treasures contained in these Armenian manuscripts easily accessible to the interested readers.