Interactive  • Web Sites: Vatican Library

Perhaps hoping that a brush with the divine would boost its stock, tech giant Hewlett-Packard Co. has teamed up with the Vatican library to put selected items from its collection on-line.

Previously available only to scholars and theologians, scans of ancient Bibles, rare works of art and handwritten manuscripts — including items by Michelangelo and Martin Luther — can now be seen by the public at a new section of the Vatican's Web site, the Holy See.

In one letter, written in 1547, Michelangelo urges the official in charge of fabrics at St. Peter's Cathedral to resist corruption and refuse any substandard materials for use in the construction and decoration of the famed basilica. The documents attributed to Luther include letters and translations of Aesop's fables into German.

Vatican officials chose the items from the library's collection of 1.6 million printed volumes, 300,000 medals and coins, 150,000 manuscripts and 100,000 prints. Hewlett-Packard provided technical consulting and donated the servers and scanners necessary to digitize their selections.

"The project brings together the technology leadership of HP with the Vatican library's treasures of science, wisdom, religion and spirituality for humankind," library prefect Rev. Raffaele Farina said in a release. "Added to this is the grace and beauty of the numerous works of art which will be made available on the Internet."

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm has been working with the Vatican for nearly a decade. In 1995 it helped launch a successful prototype Web site. Within a month of going live, the Pope had received more than 4,000 messages from the cyber-faithful. The Holy See was officially launched two years later.

While it is unlikely the association will boost HP's sales, one analyst said the donation could help the firm revitalize its image, which was tarnished last year in a messy merger with Compaq Computer Corp.

"They still have core value in the brand, but they want to be trusted again, like the old HP," Rob Enderle, a technology analyst with the Massachusetts-based research firm Giga Information Group, told the Los Angeles Times. "This is the kind of thing a company can use to recoup and image."

At the close of trading Wednesday, HP's shares had gained 65¢ (U.S.) or 4.33 per cent to $15.65 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.