As a result of generous support from the David A. Gardner '69 Magic Project, the Princeton University Library created Voyager cataloging records for most of the approximately 9,500 Islamic manuscripts in the Manuscripts Division, which are from Robert Garrett (Class of 1897) and other sources. This is the premier collection of Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and other Islamic manuscripts in the Western Hemisphere. Initially, more than 200 of these manuscripts were digitized as the core of the Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts. Separate support from the the Virginia and Richard Stewart Memorial Fund, through the Princeton University Council of the Humanities, has supported digitization of an additional 1,400 other Islamic manuscripts from existing black-and-white microfilm, produced in the 1970s with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Title II-C. The manuscripts digitized from microfilm include all texts (chiefly New Series) on Shia law and theology; texts related to other non-Sunni sects, such as the Druze and Kharijites; and more than 750 other manuscripts (Garrett Yahuda Series) on a variety of subjects. Also added are PDFs of Islamic manuscripts digitized in response to photoduplication requests. In all, approximately a sixth of the Library's Islamic manuscripts have now been digitized and put online for the benefit of scholars worldwide.

The foundations of the Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts were a major component of the Islamic Manuscripts Cataloging and Digitization Project, a four-year project under the overall direction of Don C. Skemer, and made possible by generous support from the David A. Gardner '69 Magic Project. Additional support for digitization was received through Princeton University's Council of the Humanities.