Father Nicodemus will make a brief presentation at the reception and will be available for interviews throughout the event. The Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, located in Thessaloniki, Greece, has agreed to work with the ABMC to protect the fragile documents located on Mount Athos, an isolated peninsula in northern Greece. For 1,000 years the monks of Mount Athos have guarded an important part of the world's cultural heritage. The libraries of the 20 Orthodox monasteries there hold more than 22,000 manuscripts dating from as early as the sixth century. These manuscripts are essential source documents that will provide scholars with new understanding about Christian and Jewish history, Byzantine history, art history, music history, and the classics.
Few scholars have the opportunity to visit Mount Athos.
Travel there can be arduous, and religious tradition prohibits women from visiting this ancient enclave of monasticism. The aim of the Mount Athos Digital Library and Preservation Project is to preserve the contents of the manuscripts and render them easily accessible to students and scholars everywhere. The Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center, located on the campus of the Claremont School of Theology and associated with Claremont Graduate University, pioneered the use of digital imaging technologies on deteriorated Dead Sea scrolls. Using this same technology, the ABMC will collaborate with the Patriarchal Institute to protect the only comprehensive film collection of the manuscripts of Mount Athos. These films preserve the contents of the manuscripts should fire, water, or other dangers destroy the originals.