Preservation and enhancement of the digital cultural heritage

Since 2003, the University of Bologna has provided qualified personnel and the technological infrastructure for the collection, conservation and dissemination of the University's digital cultural heritage through the institutional digital library, AMS Historica.

The service is dedicated to digitization projects of works of art, monuments, archaeological finds, manuscript codes, papyrus, books, magazines, newspapers, maps, drawings, photographs, audio and video sources and any other work of artistic or historical interest, archaeological, ethno-anthropological, archival and bibliographic preserved in the libraries, museums and archives of the University, or the result of national and international research projects.

AMS Historica, in implementation of the University Policy for digital cultural heritage, guarantees compliance with national and international guidelines and standards that favor the conservation over time and the enhancement of digitized objects.

AMS Historica, in accordance with the National Digitization Plan, uses an open source platform – DSpace GLAM – which integrates the DSpace technology with the ecosystem of digital services based on the IIIF protocol, offering innovative and powerful features for the consultation and study of heterogeneous digital content. The acronym GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums - Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) underlines the ability to welcome and manage different types of cultural heritage.

The digitized works are published with user licenses that encourage their discovery, study, sharing and reuse, according to the principles of Open Science. The licenses for use and the service delivery mode are described on the Terms of use of the service page.

 

AlmaDL offers support for:

• library analysis and technical specifications for digital acquisition;
• drafting of data management plan, by the project manager;
• metadating in Dublin Core, by the project manager;
• management of digital objects (images, audio, video);
• archiving of images in original format and long-term preservation;
• online publication in AMS Historica;
• legal issues;
• hyperlink to the SBN UBO catalogue;
• online dissemination through indexing by search engines, international catalogs and thematic portals (Cultura Italia, Europeana, OpenAIRE, WorldCat and BASE).

 

How to sign up for the service:

In order to request the publication of a digital collection in AMS Historica, the person responsible for the digitization project must:

• Arrange a preliminary meeting with the AlmaDL staff;
• complete and sign with digital signature the publication request form
  (choosing one of the versions listed below):
  • form for the University's cultural heritage [.docx 31 KB];
  • form for research projects [.docx 31 KB];
• attach the DMP (Annex 1 of the Application Form).

All documentation must be sent to the email address historica@unibo.it.

The person responsible for the digitization project must take care to directly and independently acquire a specific release for publication from any authors/rights holders of the works collected in the digitized collection.