The Vatican Apostolic Library’s Digital Preservation Project

Abstract

Preservation, conservation and free consultation are the main principles of the Vatican Apostolic Library from its inception, in the middle of the XV century. Precisely in compliance with this role, a project of long-term digital preservation began in 2010. The challenges encountered were twofold: on the one hand, the guarantee of the longevity of the technological product obtained and on the other, enabling for the dissemination of the Vatican Library’s manuscripts in a networking digital library. The continuous cooperation between the Photographic, Preservation and Conservation and Information Technology Sections of the Vatican Library was a prerequisite and has been fundamental for maintaining the high quality of the whole process.

This paper will focus on three main areas:

1.The workflow begins in the Preservation and Conservation Workshop. During these years of experience, the conservators have carefully defined the discernment/standard needed for the first selection of the volumes to be digitized. If there is any risk of damage of a manuscript during the images acquisition process, the conservators declare the volume “not digitizable”. In other instances, the conservators perform conservation treatments to enable safe photographic procedures. Together with the photographers, conservators have corrected and perfected the photo shooting process and they have defined the handling instructions to the digitizers and their preservation awareness.

2. The planning, execution and...