(apologies for cross-posting)

Will Noel is the curator of manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. He's a strong proponent of open access policies for digital library content, and he led the team that uncovered lost texts of Archimedes through the Archimedes Palimpsest Project ( http://archimedespalimpsest.org/digital/)

"How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over? With a powerful particle accelerator, of course! Ancient books curator William Noel tells the fascinating story behind the Archimedes palimpsest, a Byzantine prayer book containing previously-unknown original writings from ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes and others."

http://www.ted.com/talks/william_noel_revealing_the_lost_codex_of_archimedes...