The Tech Behind Digitizing The Vatican Library : Open Access For All

In its 500-year history, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (the Vatican Library) has only allowed 20 percent of its 80,000 plus manuscript collection to be studied. On top of that, it’s extremely difficult to get access to the library. Now, the Vatican is working to digitize its collection so everyone can have open access to this historic archive.

At EMC World 2014 earlier this month, Luciano Ammenti, CIO of the Vatican Library, sat down with Jim Furrier and Dave Vellante to talk about the project. Ammenti said the Vatican decided on doing this project four years ago, and the library is just one part of the initiative. Based on current resources, he estimates it will take about 10 years to complete, with a work flow producing 1,000 – 2,000 manuscripts a month.

The Vatican Library is using a Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) format to digitalize manuscripts. A project by NASA, FITS was created to capture astronomic images. This is the first time it’s being used for manuscripts. Regarding storage, the Vatican Library stores everything on disk using EMC Isilon architecture. In terms of security, Ammenti explained the Vatican Library has different levels of firewall for security management of the data. Ammenti added that he prefers to be high up enough on security so that no one can try to get into their system...