The project was born out of the necessity to reconcile the preservation of paper material while still permitting its consultation. The goal was to build a publicly accessible computer archive, which would extend the circulation and increase the value of a unique kind of resource. At the same time, the paper based originals are protected and preserved from the wear and tear caused by prolonged physical consultation.
The paper based consultation, especially with regards to newspapers and periodicals in general, is not a fixed required since what interests the public most is the text based content and that is the part of a document which is reproducible and transmittable.
The transformation into a digital format started with works which showed serious conservation difficulties due to the type of paper (newspapers in particular): highly degradable, easy to yellow and turning brittle. Newspapers are made to last a day, while libraries are required to preserve them, prolonging their lifespan by decades in some manner.
The first digitizations started back in 2005/2006 and got underway thanks to the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Culture (Ministro per i Beni e Attività Culturali) and by adhering to the National Library Service. The first phase saw 105,000 newspaper pages (Il Littoriale-Corriere dello Sport) from the years 1928 to 1964 being digitized.
In November 2007 the "web experiment" was initiated to provide internet access to the digitized copies of newspapers published between 1868 and 1970. The Web grants access to about 30,000 pages of our digital collection.
Project evolution
Increase the number of pages stored. We plan to bring online up to 300,000 pages by the end of the year.
Create a cooperative process with other institutions, to add more content. Facilitate the sharing of information among experts and amateurs. Readers will be allowed to add annotations either to a single or a group of pages. This will create pathways and cross-links throughout the content of the library increasing the “value” of the information stored
Improve the user interface by designing a new layout for the site. Add multi language support
Integrate the digital library with our OPAC. We envisioned a bibliographic catalog directly linked to the digitized publications
Start a new project to bring online our collection of ancient books.
