Il Centro nazionale per lo studio del manoscritto verso una nuova dimensione: dai microfilm al digitale grazie ai fondi del PNRR

Abstract

The National Central Library of Rome is the beneficiary of 9,2 million euro grant allocated by the Ministry of Culture within the framework of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), Mission 1 “Digitisation, Innovation, Competitiveness, Culture and Tourism”, Component 3 “Tourism and Culture 4.0”, Investment 1.1 “Digital Strategy and Platforms for Cultural Heritage”. Through the implementation of sub-investment M1C3 1.1.5 “Digitisation of cultural heritage”, the digitisation of the entire microfilm corpus of manuscripts preserved at the National Centre for the Study of Manuscripts (CNSM) established in 1989 at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma (BNCR), has been financed. The project involves the digitisation of more then 105,000 microfilms, most of which were produced in the second half of the last century thanks to a massive public funding. The microfilms reproduce around 111,000 manuscripts held in 186 Italian libraries and 10 foreign institutions. The expected result is the digitisation of about 23 million frames (each containing one verso and the following recto of each manuscript) that will be converted into about 46 million digital resources, to be published in the national Digital Library.

The project, which is one of the most significant initiatives ever carried out with the aim of making the manuscript heritage of Italian libraries available to the community by digital reproductions, not only facilitates the activities of use, study and research, but also makes it possible to carry out a fundamental protection operation on a large collection subject to progressive deterioration.