How did the Huntington Library help make Dead Sea Scroll research more accessible in 1991?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Dead Sea Scrolls Chapter 49 of the Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls; in the Shrine of the Book, D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Centre for Biblical Manuscripts, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

In September 1991, the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, significantly increased the accessibility of the Dead Sea Scrolls by announcing that it would grant researchers unrestricted access to its complete collection of photographs of the manuscripts.

Prior to this decision, access to the majority of the scrolls—which consist of thousands of brittle fragments—had been severely limited to a small, official editorial committee. This monopoly on the documents had led to widespread criticism regarding the slow pace of publication. By making their photographic archive available to the broader scholarly community, the Huntington Library effectively broke this monopoly. Consequently, the Israel Antiquities Authority was compelled to lift its long-standing restrictions on the use of the scrolls, marking a pivotal shift toward open research in the field.1