Brian Lang, chief executive of the British Library, explained on its website: "The Beowulf manuscript is a unique treasure and imposes on the Library a responsibility to scholars throughout the world. Digital photography offered for the first time the possibility of recording text concealed by early repairs, and a less expensive and safer way of recording readings under special light conditions. It also offers the prospect of using image enhancement technology to settle doubtful readings in the text. Network technology has facilitated direct collaboration with American scholars and makes it possible for scholars around the world to share in these discoveries. Curatorial and computing staff learned a great deal which will inform any future programmes of digitization and network service provision the Library may undertake, and our publishing department is considering the publication of an electronic scholarly edition of Beowulf. This work has not only advanced scholarship; it has also captured the imagination of a wider public, engaging people (through press reports and the availability over computer networks of selected images and text) in the appreciation of one of the primary artefacts of our shared cultural heritage." # Other treasures of the British Library Other digitized treasures of the British Library were available online as well, for example Magna Carta, the first English constitutional text, signed in 1215, with the Great Seal of King John; the Lindisfarne Gospels, dated 698; the Diamond Sutra, dated 868, sometimes referred to as the world's earliest print book; the Sforza Hours, a Renaissance treasure dated 1490-1520; the Codex Arundel, with notes by Leonardo Da Vinci from 1478 to 1518; and the Tyndale New Testament, as the first English translation of the New Testament, printed in 1526 by Peter Schoeffer in Worms, Germany. In November 2000, the British Library released a digitized version of the original Gutenberg Bible on its website. Gutenberg printed its Bible in 1454 in Mainz, Germany, perhaps printing 180 copies, with 48 copies still available in 2000, and two full copies at the British Library. A little different from each other, both were digitized in March 2000 by Japanese experts from Keio University of Tokyo and NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Communications). The images were then processed to offer a digitized version available online a few months later, for the world to enjoy. # German rare prints