This paper presents a Digital Humanities project developed in close connection with a completed doctoral dissertation on the manuscript library of the Monastery of Konstamonitou on Mount Athos. The project combines manuscript digitisation, image-based documentation, and scholarly cataloguing, with the aim of transforming a traditional printed catalogue into a structured and reusable digital resource. It addresses digitisation practices in institutionally restricted monastic environments and examines the relationship between manuscript images, metadata, and scholarly access.

The collection comprises 132 codices, including 21 manuscripts identified during on-site research that were previously unknown to scholarship and the monastic community. To date, 62 manuscripts have been digitised through a systematic and phased strategy shaped by research priorities, preservation concerns, and institutional constraints. The heterogeneous physical condition of the codices—including humidity damage, ink degradation, and unstable bindings—directly informed digitisation protocols and imaging priorities. Digitisation is therefore approached not as a neutral act of reproduction, but as a methodological process shaped by material conditions, and digital images are understood as research data rather than simple visual surrogates (Kirschenbaum 2008; Drucker 2011).

Digitised images are embedded within a descriptive metadata framework that enables comparative palaeographical and codicological analysis while acknowledging the epistemological limits of image-based research (Stokes 2015). In parallel, scholarly cataloguing—already completed for 35 manuscripts—forms the foundation of a structured digital corpus.

A central outcome of the project is the reconceptualisation of the manuscript catalogue as a controlled-access online research infrastructure rather than a static printed reference tool. By integrating digitisation, metadata, and cataloguing, the project proposes a model for sustainable and responsible Digital Humanities practice in institutionally restricted environments, demonstrating how manuscript collections such as that of Konstamonitou can be transformed into interoperable digital resources while preserving their material and institutional context (Crane et al. 2011; Hughes, Constantopoulos, and Dallas 2016).