Pavia Digital Archives

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PAD, acronym of Pavia Digital Archives is a project promoted by the University of Pavia. Established in 2009, it aims to collect native digital archives and electronic documents of personalities representative of today's culture and society, ensuring their preservation over time and the possibility of studying.

History

In 2009 Beppe Severgnini, president of the University Alumni Association, launched the idea of ​​founding an archive of digital native memories of writers, journalists and intellectuals of our time. Starting from the tradition carried out in Pavia by the Center for Studies on the Handwritten Tradition of Modern and Contemporary Authors (Centro Manoscritti) which preserves collections of documentary material from writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, the University has created a tool to extend this function of collection and storage also for archives born on digital media. The PAD archive collects materials of different types, guarantees the long-term preservation of the funds and possibly, based on the provisions of the authors, is accessible to scholars.

Project operation

The first phase is making contact with the authors, in which the steering committee selects the author. Then a contract is stipulated between the parties, which regulates the access restrictions to the archive and the consultation procedures. The documents are copied directly from the computer tools of the author; if they had them on obsolete media, the files would be converted into readable formats and returned to them to view them and decide whether to assign them.

When the files arrive at the University of Pavia, the data is copied into a protected temporary repository that ensures Disaster Recovery. Here the data is preserved without treatment to guarantee the integrity of the archive in case of errors. The program generates a list of conferred files that is sent to the author for validation. In case of second thoughts the author can decide to delete a file or a group of files. With document validation, storage and archiving procedures are initiated. If the author wishes to expand his own PAD fund, the archive will be updated, keeping the previous structures and data separate.

The various funds are divided into separate work areas, data storage spaces, separated one from the other, with different access restrictions, one for each phase, from delivery to permanent storage. For each fund, the administrative and management part is saved on a PAD internal server and a copy on a server located at the Cremona site, in the event of an environmental disaster. A third copy is placed on a hardware device stored in the bank.

The metadata are automatically extracted from the archive. Since these are a large number of data, they are reduced, keeping only those that are useful. Through the metadata the fundamental operation of identification of the format takes place, without which it would not be possible to pass to the subsequent normalization. The files that are in the working area, before being permanently stored, are subjected to the normalization operation, according to the standards suggested by the Library of Congress. They are converted into TXT, PDF and Open Document formats, so as to safeguard their usability.

In the same work area, if there were no more legible documents, because they were created with obsolete software or operating systems, they can be viewed through virtualization, by emulating the original environment. PAD has virtual machines that support systems such as MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows NT, Mac OS, Linux. In these machines are installed obsolete original programs, which allow the opening and display of files otherwise not executable with the new software.

Through a developed cataloging software, the archive is reordered, without altering its original structure.

Web archiving

Taking into account the increasing trends in the use of the network, from 2018 the project has expanded by developing a system for safeguarding websites with cultural content and social media pages. The request for inclusion in the project must start from the author or cultural institution to which the site belongs, interacting directly with the client to establish times and methods for saving and consulting. Through a software for web scraping, the author's site is reproduced locally, so as to ensure offline browsing.

Bibliography

• Carbé, Emmanuela.”Digitale d’autore. Un archivio possibile?” Archivi editoriali. Tra storia del testo e storia del libro (2018): 209-216
• Feliciati, Pierluigi, et al. “Archivi digitali d’autore: ipotesi di lavoro.”  AIUCD 2018 (2018): 256-258.
• Giordano, Tommaso. “Quando le carte diventano bit.” Biblioteche oggi36 (2018): 3-8.
• Khan, Fahad, et al. “Using Formal Ontologies for the Annotation and Study of Literary Texts.” AIUCD 2018 (2018): 246.
• La Penna, Daniela. “Italian literary archives: legacies and challenges.” (2018): 89-101.
• Severgnini, Chiara. “La memoria digitale (vulnerabile) degli scrittori” Corriere della Sera 7 (2018)
• Margherini, Simone. “Archivi digitali del Novecento: il progetto «Carte d’autore online»” L’Italianistica oggi: ricerca e didattica (2017): 1-11.
• Rossi, Federica. “Funds and Collections of the person and personality in archives, libraries and museums: a resource, an opportunity.” Bibliothecae. it 6.1 (2017): 386-424.
• Stefani, Michele. Gli archivi degli scrittori nativi digitali: verso la conservazione e oltre. BS thesis. Università Ca’Foscari Venezia, 2017.
• Weston, Paul Gabriele, Carbé Emmanuela , and Baldini Primo. “Hold it All Together: a Case Study in Quality Control for Born-Digital Archiving.” Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries 5.3 (2017): 695-710.
• Weston, Paul Gabriele, Carbé Emmanuela , and Baldini Primo. “If bits are not enough: preservation practices of the original contest for born digital literary archives.” Bibliothecae. it 6.1 (2017): 154-177.
• Carbé, Emmanuela. “Walking in My Shoes.” International Symposium on Digital Humanities: Book of Abstracts. 2016.
• Magherini, Simone. “Archivi digitali del Novecento: il progetto «Carte d’autore online» In.” Le forme e la storia 9.1 (2016): 127-142.
• Sonzini, Valentina. “Commissione nazionale AIB biblioteche speciali, archivi e biblioteche d’autore: una giornata di studi a Bologna.” Vedianche 26.2 (2016): 12-15.

References

This article "Pavia Digital Archives" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Pavia Digital Archives. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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