TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NTT DATA Corporation, a global IT services provider, today announced its deployment of a new application for accessing and browsing the Vatican Apostolic Library’s digital archive online, enabling people to view digital reproductions of more than 4,000 ancient manuscripts at the Library’s website (www.vaticanlibrary.va).
High-definition images are observable using a special viewer built with NTT DATA’s digital archive solution technology, AMLAD™. The viewer, which has interfaces for multiple types of devices, including tablets, provides easy access to brilliant images of these irreplaceable manuscripts.
NTT DATA was selected by the Vatican Apostolic Library to participate in its projects for digital preservation. The project was launched on March 20, 2014, when the two parties signed an initial four-year contract for digitization of about 3,000 documents by 2018. NTT DATA also has leveraged its AMLAD™ technology to establish the necessary infrastructure for long-term storage, safekeeping and viewing of digital specimens. Currently, NTT DATA is optimizing its metadata management technology to develop an efficient search function for the Vatican Apostolic Library’s digital archive by the end of this year.
“We are truly excited to see these high-resolution digitally formatted ancient manuscripts made readily and widely accessible to people worldwide,” says Toshio Iwamoto, President and CEO of NTT DATA. “We will continue to leverage our IT solution technologies to help advance research in diverse academic disciplines and satisfy people’s curiosity about these irreplaceable manuscripts.”
“We gladly accepted the collaboration of NTT DATA to support the further improvement of the project of digital archiving of our manuscripts using their innovative technologies,” explained Monsignor Cesare Pasini, Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library. “In so doing, we will further nurture our mission of making these treasures of humankind more widely known, in a profound spirit of universality—in terms of both knowledge and collaboration with institutions and companies throughout the world.”
This new Vatican Apostolic Library’s digital archiving system can also be accessed at the portal site (www.digitavaticana.org) maintained by Digita Vaticana, an affiliated foundation that raises funds to support the Library’s preservation projects.
About NTT DATA
NTT DATA is a leading IT services provider and global innovation partner headquartered in Tokyo, with business operations in over 40 countries. Our emphasis is on long-term commitment, combining global reach with local intimacy to provide premier professional services varying from consulting and systems development to outsourcing. For more information, visit www.nttdata.com.
About the Vatican Apostolic Library
The Vatican Apostolic Library, known as the “Popes’ library”, is located in Vatican City. Founded by Pope Nicholas V Parentucelli (1447-1455) in the antique fifteenth century palace of Popes, towards the end of Sixteenth Century, it was moved to the Sistine Hall by Pope Sixtus V Peretti (1585-1590), on the top floor of a new building built to delimit northward the Belvedere Court. The current seat, going from the pontificate of Leo XIII Pecci (1878-1903) until today, also includes other adjacent buildings into which the Library had to expand to accommodate additional acquisitions and donations of its last 560-year history.
Rich in 82,000 manuscripts, 100,000 archival units, one million and 600,000 printed books (of which 8,700 incunabula), 400,000 coins and medals, 100,000 prints, drawings and matrices and 150,000 photographs, the Library contains a huge documentation of the humankind’s history and thinking, of arts and literature, of mathematics and science, of law and medicine, from the earliest centuries of the Christian era up to the present days, in many different languages and cultures from the Far East to the West of pre-Columbian America, as well as a humanistic background of extraordinary value.
References
- “NTT DATA to Contribute to Digital Archiving of Vatican Apostolic Library Manuscripts” www.nttdata.com/global/en/news-center/pressrelease/2014/032000.html
- About AMLAD http://amlad.jp/english.html
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