Italian Digital Library

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Italian Digital Library

What, When, Whereand How?

Museums, libraries and archives online:MICHAEL service and other international

initiativesRome, 4-5 December 2006

Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities – General Direction for Library Heritage and Cultural Institutes - ICCU

Dott. Luciano Scala – General Director for Library Heritage and Cultural Institutes

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Museums, libraries and archives online:MICHAEL service and other international initiatives

Rome, 4-5 December 2006

Italian Digital Library - BDIa programme promoted by

General Direction for Library Heritage and Cultural Institutes

coordinated by

Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries and for Bibliographic Informationand with the participation of

Public, University, Local corporations, Ecclesiastic, Research, and School Libraries, and Cultural Institutes

3Museums, libraries and archives online:MICHAEL service and other international initiatives


BDI started in 2001 after a Study of Feasibility.

A Guide Committee was established with the aim to set up large scale digitisation facilities as well as to give availability of the integrated platform for cultural heritage collections.

The main objectives are:1.to indicate programs and collections to

be digitised;2.to create a network for online

accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation.




Internet culturale

The Internet Culturale portal offers an integrated access system to the digital and traditional resources of libraries, and cultural institutions, promotes and enhances knowledge and availability of Italian cultural heritage to a national and international level.




The SBN catalogue is the collective OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) of Italian libraries, which comprises about 2.900 public libraries belonging to the State, local bodies, universities, public and private institutions.

National Library Service- SBN




SBN also offers the possibility to search by document typologies, using specific channels such as: Ancient Books (monographic publications starting from the 15th century to 1830), Modern Books (monographic publications starting from 1831, as well as journals, the latter with no date restrictions), Music (manuscriptmusic, printed music and music librettos), Graphic material, Cartography.


National Library Service- SBN



Libraries in the network: 2897 Nodes: 61 Records: over 10 millionLocations: about 46 millionAccesses on the OPAC: 100 millionBibliographic searches: 20 million


National Library Service- SBNin figures



Digitised Collections (2001-2006)

1.Historical catalogues:

• Scanning and online publication of 215 historical catalogues preserved in 35 public libraries with more than 6 million accesses.




Digitised Collections2001-2006

2. Music manuscripts and documents:

• Digitisation of 10.000 musical documents with 1,5 million images in all (manuscripts and printed music, librettos, fashion plates, letters, historical records, musical revues), preserved in important Italian libraries, conservatories, academies, public and private archives.






Availability of precious and famous Music collections:

• Central National Library in Rome, National Libraries in Turin and Venice, and the Estense di Modena;

• the Augusta in Perugia, and the Mai in Bergamo civic libraries;

• the Museo Internazionale di Bologna, the music conservatory Cherubini in Florence and S. Pietro a Majella in Naples;

• the Accademia Filarmonica romana, and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia;

• The Capitolo Lateranense in Rome.






• In the musical digital collection section within the Internet culturale portal (www.internetculturale.it) are available manuscript sources with an high level historical value: from the miniated medieval codices which includes the Corali della congregazione di S. Domenico di Perugia to the very famous 57 e 59 codices by Palestrina (Capitolo Lateranense); from the 17th Century scores by Alessandro Stradella (Modena) to the Antonio Vivaldi’s autograph (Turin); from the sonatas corpus by Domenico Scarlatti of the Contariani’s collection (Venice) to the sacred compositions’ collections coming from the religious congregations of Rome (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma).






• Among the digitised sources an important place is taken by the musical collection by the Conservatorio S. Pietro a Majella di Napoli: over 3.500 volumes selected among the most precious and significative manuscripts from the historical library belonging to the musical institute. To be mentioned the numerous autograph scores by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and by the most important authors of the 18th Century in Naples as Cimarosa, Paisiello, Pergolesi and Jommelli.






• Is now in progress a project (which will be closed in the 2007) with the expectation of the “digitalisation” of 280.000 supports (wax rolls, disks, tapes, CDs, and videos) preserved in the Discoteca di Stato - Museo dell’Audiovisivo. More than 10.000 audio-hours are already digitised. It is the most important public Italian collection of audio and audiovisual documentation, shared into collections concerning the Italian popular traditions, historical voices, theatre, concerts and conferences records promoted by the Discoteca di Stato, together with the current audio materials on all the music environment.




Digitised Collectionsin progress


An illustrative view, which will be enriched with the conclusion of many digitisation projects involving important institutions:

• the Archivio Storico Ricordi (preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in Milan), based on varied documentary sources (theatre materials, epistolary documents, musical serials, audio records, videos, sketches, fashion plates, autograph manuscripts, photos, scores etc.) and on important personalities on the Italian musical culture (Verdi and Puccini among all);

• the Istituto musicale Boccherini in Lucca;

• the Casa della Musica di Parma.





• Musical Heritage in Trentino (Provincia autonoma di Trento);

• Niccolò Paganini: a virtual route connected to his figure and to Genova (Regione Liguria, Comune di Genova);




• Gioacchino Rossini’s Musical documents digitisation (Fondazione Gioacchino Rossini, Comune di Pesaro);

• Arturo Toscanini Project (Comune di Parma);





• S. Pietro a Majella, 2.5oo manuscripts and with 700.000 images of the 18th and 19th Century in Naples and Virtual S. Pietro a Majella;

• Girolamini’s Project, 55.000 images (Archivio Musicale della Congregazione dell’Oratorio di Napoli – Monumento Nazionale dei Girolamini Napoli) ;

• Music Archive of the Abbazia di Montecassino 50.000 images (Abbazia di Montecassino – Frosinone).





Digitised Collections2001 - 2006

3. The Italian Literature Classics

• Whole digital reproduction of the impressive series “Scrittori d’Italia”, edited by Laterza Publishing House and launched by Benedetto Croce in 1910: 179 literary works in 288 volumes with 135.000 images in all, which realize a sheer “monument” to the Italian cultural and publishing tradition of the Twentieth Century.

• The Italian Library created by the Dipartimento di Italianistica e Spettacolo dell’Università “La Sapienza” which digitised in image and text format 1600 works from the origins of literature until the beginning of the 20th Century;




Digitised Collections in progress

• Descriptive sources and regulations of the ITALIANO CORPUS Digitale of texts from 16th to 19th Century (Accademia della Crusca);

• Text travels (Dipartimento di Italianistica e Spettacolo dell’Università degli Studi di Roma) hypertexts on the life of important writers: from Dante to Manzoni in addition to the ones already realized on Petrarca, which purpose the complete works of 9 authors;

• Vulgaris incunabula• Plutei’s collection (Biblioteca Medicea

Laurenziana)





4. Manuscript documents and museums’ objects in scientific area:• Galileoteca Institute and Museum of History of

Science in Florence, the archive includes either over 300 Galileo’s digital collection documents (some of them very ancient and particularly precious) as well as the Vitrum Collection;

• Science Itineraries in Tuscany, offer access to major scientific and technological centres in Tuscany. As all locations have been catalogued both geographically (18 itineraries) and thematically (2 Biographies) it is possible to reach them as part of a geographical context and by typology. (Regione Toscana e IMMS di Firenze);





4. Manuscript documents and museums’ objects in scientific area:

• Mathematical Texts Project (Società Matematica Italiana and promoted by the Biblioteca Digitale della Scienza Italiana);

• Leonardo da Vinci’s itineraries;




Digitised Collections2001 - 2006

5. Serials digitisation:• Digitisation of 67 historical before 1860 serials

preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome and the Universitaria di Pisa, with more than 400.000 images in all;

• Creation of a database in the Biblioteca di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte of Italian historical serials, for a total of 115 specialized serials’ mastheads, for about 900.000 scans. The overall number of digitised historical serials amounts to 182, and the scans are about 1,5 million.





6. Photos digitisation:

• Frontoni’s collection (Museo del Cinema, Fondazione M.A. Prolo, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia/SNC Cineteca Nazionale, Regione Piemonte);

• Sommariva’s collection (Biblioteca Braidense di Milano);

• Pannunzio’s collection (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze).




Digitised Collections

7. Very recent income• Creation in the Biblioteca di

Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, of a digital archive of 670 RARE volumes about Rome with 159.000 scans in all;

• Mare Magnum Project: the digitization of a universal bibliography set up of 111 manuscript volumes, by the Biblioteca Marucelliana of Florence, published from the Fifteenth and the Eighteenth Centuries: the realization of a dream longed for 260 years.





8. New thematic areas:• The Italian Philosophy of the Humanism and

Renaissance, to realize a dynamic web application and a MAG scheme on the Italian writers of the Humanism and Renaissance (ICCU)

• Cartography materials digitisation an online Catalogue for the Biblioteca Marciana cartographic and graphic documents consultation.

• Oenogastronomic routes in the Italian regions (Consorzio BAICR Sistema Cultura);




Techological developements

• A modelling environment for integrated heritage database applications –Pinakes;

• ReMI - Software application for an integrated management of music heritage (text, sound and image) within the Italian music;

• 3D engineering (regione Emilia Romagna);




Documents and places of cultural interest are available in the Internet Culturale section Cultural Routes which includes:

• Exibitions

• Cultural-Tourist Routes

• 3D Itineraries


Internet culturale



Exibitions

24 digitised exhibitions, (available in 4 languages: Italian, English, French, and Spanish) complete with texts and images, specific reviews on the most important Italian writers like Manzoni, D’Annunzio, Calvino, Saba, Ungaretti, Bassani. Photographic exhibitions recreating atmospheres and images lost in time, expositions summarizing projects for the promotion of the national cultural heritage realized in the last years by various public libraries.

Internet culturale – Cultural Routes




Internet culturale – Cultural RoutesCultural-tourist routes

Itineraries which conjugate cultural contents with scientific information on institutions, documents, and objects. The first three thematic routes illustrate:

• Grand Tour in Tuscany made by English and French travellers between the late 17th century and the beginning of the 19th century,

• the major scientific and technological centers in Tuscany,

• the witnesses of Piemont’s culture and history.




3D itineraries

3D routes which offer users the opportunity to visit virtual spaces, rebuilt with the help of the latest technologies. Visitors will be able to go around the:

• Galileo Gallery to know the unique “scientific sanctuary” erected in honor of Galileo Galilei in 1841;

• Opera on stage. A virtual excursion in musical theater, a visit through the history of opera music, from the beginning of the 17th century until today from the Museo della Casa della Musica di Parma;





3D itineraries

• Dante and his time, an itinerary which goes along life and works of the Great Poet Dante Alighieri.

• Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in 3D, faithful three-dimensional reconstruction of the ancient Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, extraordinary architectural work designed by Michelangelo.





General Direction for Library Heritage and Cultural Activitieshttp://www.librari.beniculturali.it

Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries and for Bibliographic Information – ICCUhttp://www.iccu.sbn.it

Internet Culturalehttp://www.internetculturale.it

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Italian Digital Library