Estense Library puts 700 thousand pages of manuscripts and rare books online: here is the Estense Digital Library

More than 700 thousand digitizedpages of manuscripts and rare books: starting today Estense Digital Library, the new digital platform of the Estense University Library, accessible from edl.beniculturali.it, is online. Over the past four years, the Estense Galleries, of which the Library is part, has launched a wide-ranging project to promote and publish its art and book collections: about 15 thousand works, including medals, coins, drawings and matrices, not usually visible to the public because they are kept in storage, are currently published on the Galleries’ website. To these have been added about 9 thousand works kept in the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, and in the coming months another 2 thousand will be added. Thus, in this first phase of digitization, manuscripts, printed books, letters, and maps, including the Bible of Borso d’Este, the Collectio Antiquitatum, the Breviary of Hercules, and De Sphaera, are visible on the Library’s new digital platform.

Three important funds belonging to the Library are fully accessible: the mappario, the music collections, and theMuratori Archive. Only the latter had been well-studied and published until now, and with this project new studies are initiated to uncover remaining incomplete data of the works. You can contribute to the studies by sending reports to the address or ga-esten@beniculturali.it. TheEstense Digital Library reflects and adopts one of the cardinal principles of the Manifesto of the Italian Library Association (AIB), according to which digital libraries must be accessible and make themselves known. Indeed, it is proposed not only as a place to publish digitized physical collections, but also as a platform for data sharing and interoperability through the use of open standard formats. It is intended not only to share images, but also metadata that can be aggregated by other users.

TheEstense Digital Library is the Digital Humanities project implemented by Gallerie Estensi with the support of Fondazione Modena as part of AGO Modena Fabbriche Culturali.

Pictured is the Bible of Borso d’Este, among the digitized works.

Estense Library puts 700 thousand pages of manuscripts and rare books online: here is the Estense Digital Library

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