Digitization is increasingly being employed as a means of preserving, improving access to, and advancing research on manuscripts and rare books. In line with this trend, a project to digitize and compile a database on such holdings in the Keio University Library (KUL) has been undertaken by a group of scholars and librarians at Keio University. As a first step, the Keio Incunabula Project, which focuses on the digitization of incunabula codices, was started in 2003; this paper offers a survey of its activities and achievements.
　　The first task of the Project was to compile a comprehensive list of KUL incunabula. This entailed not only checking original materials held by KUL, but also examining all available resources relating to the KUL collection. This broad survey has succeeded in clarifying bibliographical details of the works while also tracking the chronological development of the collection for the first time. For example, the first incunabule codex acquired by KUL is a copy of Justinus's Epitomae, printed by Christophorus Valdarfer in 1476 [KUL shelfmark 120X@468@1]. The exact year of acquisition is not known, but we can surmise from available information that it came into the possession of KUL between 1952 and 1964. The next task of the Project was to prepare digital images. The aim was not to produce full digital facsimiles, so only representative pages (such as the title page, colophon, and illustrations) have been digitized with the collaboration of the HUMI Project, Keio University.
　　The final output has now been published in the Digital Gallery of Keio University Library (http://project.lib.keio.ac.jp/dg_kul/). The incunabula section contains each copy's bibliographical description, a commentary (prepared by scholars and graduate students of Keio), and digital images. The Japanese version appeared in March 2006, and the English version will come
in April 2008. In future, the members of the Project hope to extend the scope of this Digital Gallery, for which further collaboration between librarians and scholars will be essential.