Rapid Conversion of Historical Theological Works for Ad Fontes

Ad Fontes is a full-service educational resource firm for scholars and students performing research in the field of religious studies. The company’s reservoir of theological writings includes the works of more than 300 Protestant authors, as well as key theological volumes that sparked and sustained reform from within the Catholic Church before, during and after the landmark decrees of the Council of Trent.

Challenge Providing Unprecedented Access to Primary-Source Theological Writings

Despite the historical importance of these writings, often used as preferred, primary-source research by scholars, the works remained relatively inaccessible. Ad Fontes sought a solution to transform the writings into a fully-searchable digital library that all scholars could access.

Solution Custom Conversion of Legacy Data to XML

Ad Fontes turned to Aptara for its ability to efficiently convert early, multi-language print materials into dynamic digital content. A highly-skilled technical workforce and state-of-the-art integrated production facilities uniquely positioned Aptara to offer customized and efficient content transformation services.

• TIFF source images of the theological writings that were scanned at Oxford University were leveraged to create fully-tagged dynamic digital files in conformance with Ad Fontes’ TEI-based XML DTD.
• Non-Roman characters including Hebrew and Greek were coded using Unicode.
• Close to 50,000 pages were converted per quarter.

Results Two Customized, Fully-Searchable Theological Databases

• The Digital Library of Classic Protestant Texts and the Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation
• Web-based access to over 450,000 pages of primary-source material
• The fully-searchable collections contain all relevant key catechisms, scholarly treatises, papal documents, devotional works and theological volumes, providing an unprecedented window into the religious and social upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries when religious debates irrevocably altered the course of Western history.