Vatican

The Pontifical Council for Social Communication has published an eBook entitled,"Benedict XVI: World Communications Day Messages".

Prize-winning investigative reporter Edward Jay Epstein will speak to true crime fans and conspiracy enthusiasts around the globe through a series of interactive online video chats discussing some of history's most intriguing unsolved crimes, which are the topic of his recent book, The Annals of Unsolved Crime.

The series will comprise an initial six online chats on Tuesdays at 5pm EDT and will be powered by Shindig.com, an interactive platform for large scale video chat events, allowing attendees to enjoy a live talk by a notable personality, share the stage to ask them questions face-to-face or to privately video chat with other participants in the event. "Shindig provides an extraordinary interactive means of directly answering questions provoked by the cases in my book," Epstein said. The discussions will be free, but are limited to the first 800 RSVPs who sign up at: www.mhpbooks.com/unsolvedcrime

Aptara, a provider of digital publishing services, has just announced a new publishing partnership with the Vatican, for whom they will produce ebooks. These ebooks, the Vatican’s first, will be an illustrated series of Pope Benedict’s weekly addresses, dating back to March, 2006.

From the press release: Aptara, a pioneer in digital publishingsolutions, produced the Vatican’s first eBooks, an illustrated series of Pope Benedict’s weekly addresses dating back to March, 2006. With their first foray into mobile publishing the Catholic Church is expanding its reach to younger and more technologically savvy audiences. Available from the Apple Store, the series [...]

From an Aptara publication: In May, Aptara produced the Vatican’s first eBooks, the illustrated version of Pope Benedict’s weekly addresses for the iPad. Available from the Apple Store in Italy, the series contains 13 highly illustrated eBooks. Each of the Pope’s weekly talks focuses on a prominent figure in the Church’s history and is accompanied by elaborate portraits, paintings, and photos. [...]

The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) said on Thursday they intended to digitize 1.5 million pages of ancient texts and make them freely available online. The libraries said the digitized collections will centre on three subject areas: Greek manuscripts, 15th-century printed books and Hebrew manuscripts and early [...]