(Finance) – Digitization of microfilms of manuscripts. This is what is foreseen by the first tender launched for the digitization intervention intended to enrich, expand and organize the national digital cultural heritage. The tender is published by Invitalia as Central of
Single client for the cultural heritage digitization projects envisaged by the PNRR.
The aim of the tender procedure, aimed at concluding a multilateral Framework Agreement with several suppliers, – explains Invitalia in a note – is to entrust selected contractors with the digitization services of microfilms of manuscripts of the National Center for the Study of the Manuscript (CNSM) kept at the National Central Library of Romewhich is the recipient of the intervention.
The project will have a total value of 9.2 million euros and constitutes one of the most significant interventions ever conducted in the manuscript sector, to make the patrimony of Italian libraries accessible and usable to all by means of digital reproductions.
The operation involves the digitization of Italy’s largest manuscript microfilm fund, made up of over 107,000 individual microfilms made in the second half of the last century. The microfilms reproduce over 110 thousand manuscripts, the originals of which are kept in over 180 libraries distributed throughout the country, as well as in 16 foreign libraries.
Overall, the microfilm fund of the National Center for the Study of the Manuscript it is made up of about 23 million single frames that will be converted into as many digital resources, for a total of 46 million digitized pages.
The reference cultural, design and technological context of the intervention is indicated in National digitization plan published byCentral Institute for the Digitization of Cultural Heritage – Digital Library of the MiC. The microfilm digitization project makes it possible to put into practice all the indications contained in the Plan and in the Guidelines for digitization, which offer concrete tools and references to carry out the digital transformation of the cultural sector. All microfilms will be digitized with state-of-the-art equipment, and the minimum levels of digital outputs required comply with international standards, to ensure high-resolution images and quality metadata.
The initiative is part of the operational technical support made available by Ministry of Economy and Finance and from Ministry of culture to the Central Institute for the Digitization of Cultural Heritage – Digital Library for measurement “Cultural heritage for the next generation” of Component 3 “Tourism and Culture 4.0” dedicated to production services for the increase of cultural digital resources.
Under the sub-investment 1.1.5 will come other tender procedures for digitization published within the year of a wide range of types of objects of the Italian cultural heritage: works of art and archaeological finds, post-unification journals and archival documents, historical maps and land registers, photographic archives of the Superintendencies and museums, audio and audiovisual materials. Specific procedures will also be promoted for the 3D digitization and for the recovery of previous digitizations. The interventions will contribute to the achievement of the European program target which provides, by the end of 2025, 65 million digital assets published and accessible through the Digital Library.
There tender procedure provides for the assignment of the digitization of microfilms to several economic operators in order to be able to comply with time constraints and targets set by the PNRR. The instrument ofMultilateral Framework Agreement constitutes a support to the governance of the intervention: it allows the PA to accelerate the implementation of the PNRR, favoring the widest participation and the identification of multiple qualified operators and, at the same time, allows the market to organize the offer in the face of a huge demand from a quantitative point of view and challenging from a technological point of view. The deadline for the procedure is September 20, 2022.