14 DAY TRIAL // In partnership with Toura, the British Library has released its first application targeting iOS devices, ‘Treasures.’ The app acts like a gateway to the Library’s collections, anywhere the user might be.
Comprising over 100 highlights from the Library’s collections, including literary, historical, music-related and scientific documents, Treasures also delivers illuminated manuscripts and sacred texts.
Each document is presented in high-resolution, which allows the viewer to zoom in and explore the text in detail, according to Toura, the developer contracted by The British Library to code the app.
Treasures includes such literary highlights as Charles Dickens’s handwritten draft of Nicholas Nickleby, Jane Austen’s teenage writings, key historical documents such as the 2000-year-old Oracle Bones from China, an original Magna Carta of 1215, Elizabeth I’s famous Tilbury speech before the Spanish Armada, and a recording of suffragette Christabel Pankhurst’s speech after her release from prison.
An entire section of the app is devoted to music, according to Toura. For music fanatics, the developer included manuscript scores from some of the best-known classical composers, such as Handel, Purcell, Mozart and Schubert, alongside calypso and traditional folk music.
The maps section showcases some of the most interesting and beautiful maps and views from the collection.
For the religious types, Christian texts include the Codex Sinaiticus, the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Gutenberg Bible.
Those who are of a different religion can refer to the Golden Haggadah, Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an, and Buddhist, Daoist, Hindu, Sikh and Zoroastrian manuscripts.
Last, but certainly not least, a scientific-centric section explores fields such as astronomy, botany, zoology and medicine.
Here, readers can also choose from various manuscripts, notebooks and letters that reveal some of the key scientific developments of all time.
Highlights by Toura include Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, and Copernicus’s and Galileo’s findings on the structure of the cosmos.
Sound recordings and nearly 50 short videos are also to be had in the Treasures app. These can be streamed over WiFi and include interviews with British Library curators, linguist David Crystal, and TV presenter and explorer Ben Fogle.
Toura promises to regularly update the app with information on British Library exhibitions, highlighting some of the star items that will be on display in the future.
British Library: Treasures is available for UK customers only.
Download British Library: Treasures for iPhone / iPod touch (£1.19)