Si fa presto a dire “Digitalizziamo!”

Abstract

The widespread availability of web-based resources for the study and analysis of bibliographic and archival sources has led to digitisation ‒ encompassing the creation of new digital assets from analogue sources and the access of already existing digital contents and/or born-digital contents ‒ being no longer a distant and insurmountable challenge. Instead, it represents an attainable horizon, which is readily accessible, brimming with potential and valuable resources for utilisation. This achievement is impressive and embodies a ‘vision’ that was once considered utopian or unattainable, but at the same time conceals a potentially disruptive risk: that of underestimating the complexity of implementation inherent in the digital world, in its application and in the many efforts that have already been made (and are still being made daily) to make it useful, usable, stable and of quality. We have benefited from several recent standards created by the international community of experts with the goal of regulating a dynamic and rapidly changing sphere. These standards aim to establish certain necessary points regarding good technical practices; however, they can be difficult to understand due to their technical nature and density of information. They therefore need to be translated and contextualised.