(Cross-posted on the Nonprofits Blog, the Official Google Blog and the European Public Policy Blog)

It’s taken 24 centuries, the work of archaeologists, scholars and historians, and the advent of the Internet to make the Dead Sea Scrolls accessible to anyone in the world. Today, on the eve of the new year on the Hebrew calendar, we’re celebrating the launch of the Dead Sea Scrolls online; a project of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem powered by Google technology.



Written between the third and first centuries BCE, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence. In 68 BCE, they were hidden in 11 caves in the Judean desert on the shores of the Dead Sea to protect them from the approaching Roman armies. They weren’t discovered again until 1947, when a Bedouin shepherd threw a rock in a cave and realized something was inside. Since 1965, the scrolls have been on exhibit at the Shrine of the Book at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Among other topics, the scrolls offer critical insights into life and religion in ancient Jerusalem, including the birth of Christianity.

Now, anyone around the world can view, read and interact with five digitized Dead Sea Scrolls. The high resolution photographs, taken by Ardon Bar-Hama, are up to 1,200 megapixels, almost 200 times more than the average consumer camera, so viewers can see even the most minute details in the parchment. For example, zoom in on the Temple Scroll to get a feel for the animal skin it's written on—only one-tenth of a millimeter thick.

You can browse the Great Isaiah Scroll, the most well known scroll and the one that can be found in most home bibles, by chapter and verse. You can also click directly on the Hebrew text and get an English translation. While you’re there, leave a comment for others to see.

The scroll text is also discoverable via web search. If you search for phrases from the scrolls, a link to that text within the scroll viewers on the Dead Sea Scrolls collections site may surface in your search results. For example, search for [Dead Sea Scrolls "In the day of thy planting thou didst make it to grow"], and you may see a link to Chapter 17:Verse 11 within the Great Isaiah Scroll.

This partnership with The Israel Museum, Jerusalem is part of our larger effort to bring important cultural and historical collections online. We are thrilled to have been able to help this project through hosting on Google Storage and App Engine, helping design the web experience and making it searchable and accessible to the world. We’ve been involved in similar projects in the past, including the Google Art Project, Yad Vashem Holocaust photo collection and the Prado Museum in Madrid. We encourage organizations interested in partnering with us in our archiving efforts to enter their information in this form. We hope you enjoy visiting the Dead Sea Scrolls collection online, or any of these other projects, and interacting with history at your fingertips.

Update 9/26/11: An earlier version of this post erroneously excluded our work on the Google Art Project. We've also amended the description of the partnership form to better define the types of partners who might want to submit their information to be considered in our archiving work.

Posted by Eyal Miller, New Business Development and Eyal Fink, Software Engineer, Israel Research and Development Center

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(Cross-posted from the Google Lat Long Blog)

Following the Republic of South Sudan's recognition as the UN's 193rd Member State, we have updated Google Maps and Google Earth to reflect the new country borders.

Satellite view of the Republic of South Sudan
Google -- along with the World Bank, UNOSAT, and RCMRD-- is also helping to create better maps of South Sudan by supporting communities who map schools, hospitals, roads, and more with Google Map Maker. The events kicked off in late April at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and a satellite event in Nairobi at the same time.

The most recent of several organized community mapping events was hosted on September 7th by the South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics in Juba. Information Minister Dr. Barnaba Marial Benjamin indicated that such mapping efforts help bring together South Sudanese from all over the world. The events provide them with new ways to share knowledge and experiences.

Let’s continue mapping South Sudan and stay connected via our Sudan-specific email discussions.

Posted by France Lamy, Program Manager, Google.org

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With one week to go until the entry deadline for Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition, run by Ashoka Changemakers with support from Google, we wanted to share some of the activity that this competition has generated. We think it may inspire a few more of you to enter your ideas for improving the access to and quality of information for people around the globe.

Ashoka selected and announced two early entry prize winners whose innovations are representative of the type of ideas we’re excited to see come out of this competition:

• The Viewspaper - An online platform engaging thousands of young people in India and the United Kingdom. Shiv Dravid, Viewspapers’s founder, writes: "The Viewspaper provides a web platform, which uses open source technology and online marketing to crowdsource the views of young people from around the world."
• FreedomBox - A platform to provide private, anonymous, and secure interpersonal communication. According to founder James Vasile, it will "put in people's own hands and under their own control encrypted voice and text communication, anonymous publishing, social networking, media sharing, and (micro)blogging."

Ashoka also asked journalists and practitioners to develop content on the nature and future of information citizenship. Here are some of these.

• Citizen Media: Perspectives from Thought-Leaders - Five videos from thought-leaders in citizen media, including talks from Ethan Zuckerman (co-founder of Global Voices), Alisa Miller (CEO of Public Radio International), and Wadah Khanfar (Director General of Al Jazeera).
• "Media is complicated." Or not. - A review of some of the conversations and trends from the MIT | Knight Civic Media Conference.
• Arab Spring -- and the Long Winter Ahead - A look at the role of citizen media in the Arab Spring, tensions between technology and privacy, and conversations with thought-leaders in the field.

To date, this competition has generated incredible activity and discussion on Citizen Media and has gotten people involved from around the globe. It has received submissions from India, the United States, Pakistan, Egypt, the UK, and Brazil as well as other countries. If you want to discuss issues related to Citizen Media you can join the Twitter chat that Ashoka Changemakers is hosting on Monday, September 12, 3 -5 pm EST.

There’s still time to submit your idea to have the opportunity to win a prize of $5,000 and be considered for an Ashoka Fellowship (which includes a three-year living stipend, and access to a global network of changemakers).

We're excited to support this program and encourage you to enter the competition.

Mimi Kravetz, Google.org Team

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