The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library site has launched. There you can view high-resolution images of many biblical and non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls. I don’t have all the details about the site yet, but do go and explore it! This is not the same site as the Digital Dead Sea Scrolls that the Israel Museum launched a couple years ago. Thanks to Jonathan Kiel for the heads up on this.
From Shuka Dorfman, the General Director of the Israel Antiquities Authorities:
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is very proud to present the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, a free online digitized virtual library of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hundreds of manuscripts made up of thousands of fragments – discovered from 1947 and until the early 1960’s in the Judean Desert along the western shore of the Dead Sea – are now available to the public online. The high resolution images are extremely detailed and can be accessed through various search options on the site.
With the generous lead support of the Leon Levy Foundation and additional generous support of the Arcadia Fund, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google joined forces to develop the most advanced imaging and web technologies to bring to the web hundreds of Dead Sea Scrolls images as well as specially developed supporting resources in a user-friendly platform intended for the public, students and scholars alike.
The launch of the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library comes some 11 years after the completion of the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, initiated and sponsored by the IAA, and 65 years after the first scrolls were unearthed in the Caves of Qumran. This digital library is another example of the IAA’s vision and mission, to make these ancient texts freely available and accessible to people around the world. The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library represents a new milestone in the annals of the story of one of the greatest manuscript finds of all times.
On the IOSCS Facebook page, Shani Tzoref explains that the imaging is still in process, so not every plate and fragment is online yet. She says,
Bear in mind that this first version is intended primarily for the public. There are more texts and advanced features to come in future recensions.
She also points out this helpful report about the project on the Times of Israel website.
Brian W. Davidson 
3 responses to “Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library”
Thanks for the props! I just can’t believe I knew before you…
🙂 It happens. I slept in one morning, and, well, the proverb was fulfilled: “a little sleep a little slumber, a little folding of the hands and poverty (lit. Heb. “the state of being beat to the punch in online news reporting concerning biblical studies stuff”) will come upon you like a bandit!” (Prov 6:9-10)
[…] published and available to scholars and the public was a frustrating issue? How times have changed! Now significant numbers of the scrolls are available online, thanks to a partnership between the IAA […]