Digital collection

Dan Brown has donated € 300,000 to digitize the core collection of some 4,600 ancient books.

16 June 2016

Thanks to Brown’s donation, the public will be able to access the core collection of some 4,600 ancient books online in the near future. Brown is a great admirer of the library (widely known as The Ritman Library after its founder Joost R. Ritman) and visited on several occasions while writing his novels The Lost Symbol and Inferno. “I consider it a great honor”, the world-famous author said, “to play a role in this important preservation initiative that will make these texts available to the public." The Dutch Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds is also contributing to the digitization project, to the amount of € 15,000.

Director Esther Ritman: ‘It has always been our dream to connect this treasure house with the community and make it Hermetically Open to all. Thanks to Dan Brown we can digitize our core collection. I am thrilled to see this dream becoming a reality."

The comprehensive digitization project will be carried out by Picturae, a company specializing in making Dutch cultural heritage digitally accessible. The first 1,500 can be found in the online catalogue.