Abstract
This paper deals with the application of digital technologies to the preservation and exploitation of the heterogeneous documents of the Herbarium Universitatis Mediolanensis of the University of Milan. The collection, dating back to the 19th and 20th Century, is mainly constituted by exsiccata, i.e. specimens (whole plants or plant parts) in dried form mounted on paper sheets; the archive also includes large botanical lithographs originally used in schools as educational tools. The long-term goal of the project is to complete the digitization campaign and make all these documents publicly available via a Web portal; currently, all metadata (23000 files approx.) and about 6000 digital objects are online. In this work, the whole process will be discussed, from digitization to the implementation of the Web portal based on a multimedia relational database.
Highlights
From science to technology, from medicine to humanities, the University of Milan (Universita degli Studi di Milano) shows the evolution of a multidisciplinary knowledge
This paper deals with the application of digital technologies to the preservation and exploitation of the heterogeneous documents of the Herbarium Universitatis Mediolanensis of the University of Milan
The collection, dating back to the 19th and 20th Century, is mainly constituted by exsiccata, i.e. specimens in dried form mounted on paper sheets; the archive includes large botanical lithographs originally used in schools as educational tools
Summary
From medicine to humanities, the University of Milan (Universita degli Studi di Milano) shows the evolution of a multidisciplinary knowledge. Founded in 1924, such an institution has a relatively short history, but it inherited a longer tradition of advanced studies and education in different fields, carried out by former scientific bodies This is why it possesses several collections of specimens, documents and books, models, instruments with a special historical and documentary value. This paper deals with a project of preservation and valorization through digital technologies, of some of the collections that are nowadays part of the Herbarium Universitatis Mediolanensis (from here on, called HbMI) It is a rich heritage mainly composed of exsiccated specimen collections from 19th and 20th Century, that includes other historical collections, i.e. wall charts and xylotheques dating around the same period and more recent specialized herbaria. It consists of tens of thousands of objects that show research and educational practices in over time
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