Impronte Digitali improntedigitali.unifi.it is the new platform created by the University Library System to archive, protect and make available in digital format the historical, rare and valuable material held by the libraries of the University of Florence. It allows for the long-term management and archiving of this material, as well as its retrieval and consultation for research and teaching purposes.
It preserves and describes the digital objects that the libraries have produced since 2010, when the digitisation process began within the Library System.
The collection has gradually been enriched with new resources resulting from digitisation projects aimed at preserving and, at the same time, enhancing and sharing important and rare pieces from the libraries' historical collections.
At present, the collection archived and described in Impronte Digitali amounts to approximately 4,000 digital objects relating to 15 documentary collections, 3 archival fonds and 11 journals, for a total of approximately 200,000 images.
It is possible to explore the environment starting from various groupings of digital objects: Collections, Archival Fonds, Journals. An internal search engine is also available with a variety of filters for refining and sorting results. In addition, there are a number of Pathways that bring together digital objects from different collections and offer alternative narratives for the purpose of discovering heritage.
For each object, it is possible to access the digitised content and take advantage of advanced image viewing and usage features thanks to the Mirador viewer, based on the IIIF standard.
Impronte Digitali is based on Dspace-GLAM software, an extension of the open-source Dspace platform developed by 4Science for projects dedicated to the creation and management of digital collections.
Impronte Digitali has been configured to communicate with external platforms through the OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) protocol, in particular to provide data in MAG (Metadati Amministrativi e Gestionali) format to the ICCU's Internet Culturale, Alphabetica and OPAC SBN portals. One of the objectives is also to bring together data on digital objects in other national aggregators, including Cultura Italia, the Italian culture portal, and international aggregators, in particular Europeana, the digital library for the promotion of the cultural heritage of the European Union.