GASPARINI LIBRARY – DIGITIZATION OF THE SECTION “ANCIENT BOOKS”

The Library of the Ferdinando Gasparini Engineering Area – Ancient Books Section boasts a repertoire of over 6000 monographs, collected in a rather long period of time, since 1600 date of the first edition of “all the works of architecture and perspective by Sebastiano Serlio Bolognese” to the end of the 19th century, with fundamental works such as Maxwell’s treatise on electromagnetism.

The use of this important repertoire poses non negligible problems related both to the human resources available for such a “special” service and to the optimal protection and conservation of the preserved repertoire.

The result is an objective difficulty in accessing the heritage of the Ancient Books Section.

In the awareness of all this, CIBeC has promoted and activated, for a few years already, a long and tiring process of high-resolution digitization of the Section’s monographs, starting from the most “ancient” ones. A patient work of post- processing and pagination, in strict compliance with homogeneity criteria, has allowed the creation of digital versions of an increasing number of treatises, in PDF format, de facto a universal standard, which can be consulted, without constraints or limits, from a dedicated informatic point, located at the Engineering Area Library.

To accelerate the usability of a significant number of the most ancient (and precious) monographs of the section, it was decided to make use of the digital version of treatises belonging to our library already available, as “public domain”, by prestigious university centers (such as the University of Heidelberg) or important public institutions (such as the National Library of France “Gallica”).

The result of this operation, that is constantly updated, is the availability, already at present, of hundreds of treatises in high or very high-resolution digital format.

An INFO POINT suitable to indicate the presence / availability of the descriptive facility can consist of a high-resolution screen of adequate size (40-50 inches), placed near the entrance to the Library, on which on can access to pages containing:

General information on the Ancient Books Section.

Specific information on the digital repertoire already available for “virtual” consultation.

Title pages and significant pages of treatises having a particular historical importance.

Period: 2015