Sourcelibrary.org Is Translating the Renaissance

SourceLibrary.org is the world’s largest library of translated ancient texts.

Just about 3% of the Latin Renaissance has been translated to English. The 97% cannot be read but by NeoLatin specialists. Most of these books are also missing from AI training.

And then there are thousands and thousands of ancient texts in Chinese and Sanskrit and other languages.

We want to reconnect the world with these source texts. www.SourceLibrary.org is launching in beta with 15,000+ translated books from over 50 different languages. More than half appear to be completely new translations. For scale, our word count just exceeded English Wikipedia. We have hundreds of thousands of images —- and everything is searchable.

It is also nearly totally free. These texts are all Creative Commons share-alike and accessible via MCP or API. So if you use AI, you can benefit from your AI having actual source texts at the ready. It is incredible if you are a history buff.

Imagine going down a rabbit hole on Alchemy in Claude and being able to retrieve and compare actual source texts in Latin, Chinese, Sanskrit etc — and then go directly to the scanned and annotated page of the books.

Believe me, there are so many rabbit holes. Go check out our new collection on Baltic Paganism or see the Index Libertorum Prohibitorum (a catalog of all the books ever banned by the Catholic Church). Or our images of mystical union or our podcast on ancient evidence for magic mushrooms…

So, we just had our beta launch (video available Tuesday) at the Embassy of the Free Mind (www.EmbassyoftheFreeMind.com) in Amsterdam, home to the Biblioteca Philosophica Hermetica, a UNESCO recognized “Memory of the World” rare book library founded by Joost Ritman. (They also have a Guinness record for the largest library devoted to magic and mysticism. Like a real world hogwarts in the middle of Amsterdam!)

In 15th century Florence, translations of Ancient Greek and Egyptian Wisdom helped to ignite a European-wide Renaissance. Maybe just maybe translating the world’s Ancient Wisdom could make a global AI renaissance more likely than an AI apocalypse? Perhaps that’s just magical thinking… but what is magic anyway? <searches SourceLibrary> oh, it’s “…the absolute consummation of natural philosophy”. That’s a lovely thought, from the source: https://sourcelibrary.org/book/ioannis-pici-mirandulae-omnia...

HN, please sign up for free and leave feedback, found at the bottom of every page. If something is annoying or improper or hard to use — please share. I read feedback almost every day. [email protected]

Test out the librarian — it’s a research agent that can retrieve quotes and images in chat.

And, finally, please help us find founding donors! We are entirely supported by personal donors. We need lots of tokens, if you know any potential corporate sponsorship. In addition to the digital impact, we want to create long term support for the human stewardship of this material. The wisdom is more than the books…

SourceLibrary.org is an open source initiative of the Embassy of the Free Mind (embassyofthefreemind.com), a Dutch nonprofit with 501c3 status. More here: https://sourcelibrary.org/support

If this project resonates with you, please let me know what you find!

Derek Lomas, PhD Assistant Professor of Positive AI Department of Human-Centered Design Delft University of Technology The Netherlands Dereklomas.me

PS. Thank you to my friends at www.Playpowerlabs.com, www.getsmartpaper.com and Wisdom-Frontier.org for concept and development support — and thanks to https://www.frond.studio/ for design support