In the spirit of the manifestos issued by IFLA/UNESCO (Manifesto for Digital Libraries) and AIB (the Italian Association of Libraries’ New Manifesto for Digital Libraries), and in compliance with the IFLA recommendations for the digitalisation of ancient heritage, the platform facilitates knowledge, research and study, dissemination, fruition and valorisation of the materials held in libraries and thus addresses not only the scientific community, but a potentially enormous audience. Moreover, the process of digitalisation also takes the form of a tool of preventive conservation, since it saves these delicate materials from being handled continuously and thus from the inevitable wear and tear that comes from direct consultation, while ensuring that a documentary record is made of them.

The BDS project is the natural evolution of twenty years of the Library’s work in this field, conducted because it has an in-house digitalisation laboratory furnished with the latest equipment, where its highly qualified staff subjects the material to selection, cataloguing, reproduction and conversion into metadata.

BDS hosts the publication of some of the digitalised documents from the substantial archive that has accumulated over the years and whose growth has been continuous, always respecting a scale of priorities: primarily, the state of the material’s conservation, its fragility and delicacy; then the historical, artistic and documentary importance and the rarity of the individual specimen, the Library’s participation in projects for the online publication of its materials in partnership with other bodies and, finally, user demand.

The architecture adopted by BDS is based on open standards for metadata and uses an international protocol (the International Image Interoperability Framework™), which enables a shared digital environment to be created within which ultra-high definition images can be used, offering the possibility of drawing comparisons, making notes and in-depth zooms, facilitating research and communication by ensuring a complete interoperability between digital collections and libraries all over the world that use the same standard.

BDS is constantly being augmented with new acquisitions, which you can find in the News section.

Organised by type of heritage, the digital catalogue is accompanied by the Itineraries section, which is designed to offer users suggestions of potential itineraries for exploring and delving further into individual documents, authors, artists, special collections and issues.

In the Projects section, BDS also offers users a chance to consult and get to know the results of some of the partnerships developed and curated by the Library in the field of digital humanities with other domestic and international cultural bodies and institutions.

The platform was created by GruppoMeta, a company with years of experience in designing and developing digital systems for communicating and valorising heritage.
The platform’s graphic design is by Muttnik, a group that works in visual communication, publishing and illustration, with a special focus on activities in cultural venues and exhibitions, and by MamaStudiOs, a web agency operating in the field of information technology.

BDS is entirely financed by Ales - Arte, Lavoro e Servizi S.p.A., the Italian Ministry of Culture’s in-house company whose principle activity is in supporting projects to preserve and valorise Italy’s cultural heritage.