THE PORTAL

The Italian Digital Library Portal and Cultural-Tourist Network, www.internetculturale.it, proposes an integrated access system to the digital and traditional resources of libraries, archives, and other Italian cultural institutions, in order to promote and enhance the knowledge and availability of the cultural heritage to a national and international level.
The Portal offers didactic, professional and institutional information concerning the Italian cultural heritage and related activities. The Portal presents both the general and the specialized user with the opportunity to search bibliographical information and digital contents coming from different information sources.
The version online offers, at present, a first nucleus of information and services. Future releases will be focused on new contents and tools.

THE INSTITUTIONS

The project has been promoted by the General Direction for Library Heritage and Cultural Institutes (DGBLIC), and realized by the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries and for Bibliographic Information (ICCU), which has managed the project, coordinated its numerous partners, implemented new functions as well as integrating its pre-existing services in the portal.
DGBLIC safeguards and valorizes the national book heritage through a system of 46 public state libraries; it promotes the diffusion of book and culture in Italy and abroad; it sustains and controls cultural institutes such as foundations and academies.
The General Direction, moreover, is engaged in the promotion of reading within the country and the international community, as well as in the economic-financing of the sector.
ICCU, acting as the DGBLIC technical-scientific point of reference, promotes and coordinates cataloguing and documentation activities concerning books kept in public libraries. In particular, it is in charge of the National Library Service (SBN), viz. a national services network which connects over 3500 libraries engaged in creating a collective national catalogue managed by  ICCU itself.
Furthermore, the Institute promotes and coordinates the national Census of manuscripts and XVI century editions owned by Italian Libraries.
In the development of the Portal ICCU has availed itself of the collaboration of many partners (see list ) who have shared their expertise  in the themes illustrated or in digitization.

THE BDI AND THE DIGITIZATION PROJECTS

In 2001, within the III National Library conference, the BDI (Italian Digital Library) Project was launched officially and its Guideline Committee established. The latter is chaired by Tullio Gregory and is composed of experts belonging to state and regional libraries, museums, archives and the world of universities and research, all called to define the guidelines of the Project.
In this context ICCU played a role both as monitor of the whole programme and as being responsible for a particular digitising project.  Subsequently other projects have been financed. These concern  musical documents preserved in public libraries and in musical academies as well as periodicals with particular historic and cultural value.
The advent of digitization with all its advantages has been greeted with great enthusiasm by the library community. Consequently  libraries have engaged themselves in a great number of digitization projects. In order to give publicity to all of these and to prevent duplications, ICCU has been entrusted by the Guideline Committee with the realization of a census of all extant digitization projects, closed or ongoing.
The census results have highlighted a great activity in this field. The next step, together with other European nations, has been the realization of a cultural-tourist network, to provide Internet users all the digital and the most significant traditional bibliographic resources.

SERVICES AND CONTENTS OF THE PORTAL'S FIRST SECTION

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SEARCH. Through the SBN OPAC (the National Librarian Service OPAC) it is possible by way of  simple or advanced queries to search records kept by 3500 Italian libraries belonging to universities, local organizations, public and private institutions, all working in different disciplinary areas, concerning works published since the history of the press began until  today. It is also possible to search through a number of  "historical catalogues", viz. manuscript catalogues bound in volumes or in card format, belonging to 35 Italian libraries. Moreover, users are allowed to peruse "special catalogues", such as the BibMan and Manus data files (regarding manuscripts) and  Edit 16 (regarding 16th century editions). The latter gives access to archives of authors, titles, publishers, printer devices and relevant digitized images (frontispieces, colophon, brands).

ACCESS TO DIGITAL COLLECTIONS . The repertory of digital collections describes the collections which have been digitized or are going to be digitized, belonging to libraries, museums, archives and other cultural institutions in Italy. The aim is to provide Internet users with the opportunity of identifying and localizing the available digital collections and, if possible, to consult them directly online.
The search of digital images and material is made possible by the use of tools such as SDX, the international standard system for access to digital collection records.

CULTURAL ROUTES . Internet Culturale, in collaboration with its partners, offers a series of interesting cultural routes. Through these it is possible to follow a number of  prefixed itineraries which highlight specific touristic and cultural topics. More than 20 digitized exhibitions are accessible. These have been realized in the last years by various public libraries and focus on important Italian writers and 20th century poets. The itineraries are in different languages and suitable for the youth; they offer partially unpublished documents and form a true map of places of cultural interest. The 3D routes open alternative ways of access to Galileo's Tribune and the Casa della Musica di Parma as well as providing images of great effect. New channels for text fruition are made possible by  these hypertextual routes: The Petrarchian world, Verdi and his interpreters .
It is also possible to access the text of many significant works of Italian literature, including both classical and contemporary authors as well as books for children and young people. These have been offered by the project "Un mare di Sogni" ("A sea of dreams") which aims at publishing and distributing Italian books, which have been translated into Spanish, free of cost in the libraries and schools in South America in order to promote cultural interchanges between Italy and South American Countries.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT . Data classification has been realized with a Knowledge Management (KM) system based on the analysis of the informative contents present in the SBN OPAC catalogue, other web sites and many digitized documents endowed with MAG (Metadati Amministrivi Gestionali) records. Thus, it has been possible to prepare 4 different thematic areas specializing in literary, scientific, musical and geographical themes. These areas have also been prepared in collaboration with different centres of excellence such as the Dipartimento di Italianistica of the University of Rome "La Sapienza", Institute and Museum of the History of Science of  Florence, the Casa della Musica of Parma, and by using the software Verity 5.5, through an application suitably developed for the project.