Show HN: Help SourceLibrary.org Translate the Renaissance

SourceLibrary.org is currently the world’s largest online library of translated ancient sources. It contains over 15,000 books translated from dozens of languages (Latin, Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Egyptian, etc)—from sacred texts to early science. Our vision is to make ancient wisdom accessible to both people and AI.

Did you know that less than 3% of the Latin Renaissance has ever been translated into English?

This is ironic, because translations of ancient Greek wisdom texts are historically credited with helping to ignite the Renaissance. Yet, the Renaissance itself was mostly written in NeoLatin and it is currently 97% untranslated.

For scale, the word count of SourceLibrary.org just exceeded English Wikipedia. In addition to the texts, there are hundreds of thousands of searchable images.

SourceLibrary is free and open-source (AGPL3). Scans are mostly public domain and translated texts are Creative Commons share-alike. All is accessible via MCP or API. Point Claude Code or Codex at sourcelibrary and see what it is like when it can search and quote source texts. E.g., ask Claude Code to compare alchemical practices in Latin, Chinese, Sanskrit etc — and ask for images.

SourceLibrary.org is an open source initiative of the Embassy of the Free Mind (https://www.EmbassyoftheFreeMind.com), a Dutch nonprofit with 501c3 status and home to the Biblioteca Philosophica Hermetica, a UNESCO recognized “Memory of the World” rare book library. SourceLibrary is entirely supported by tax-deductable donations. Corporate sponsorships and partnerships are also welcome: https://sourcelibrary.org/support

We invite you to participate in this historical effort to translate the Renaissance and beyond. In addition to the digital impact, we hope to manifest long-term institutional support for the (global) human stewardship of these materials.

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. Maybe test out the librarian https://sourcelibrary.org/librarian — it’s a research agent that can retrieve quotes and images in chat.

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

Derek

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