The Vatican Apostolic Library (BAV) presented this week a copy of 30 precious manuscripts – digitized and transferred in a photosensitive film – in the Arctic World Archive, housed in the Svalbard islands.
The Archive was inaugurated in 2017 and is located in the depths of the Arctic mountains in ideal climatic conditions for conservation. The archive – similar in substance to the role played by the Svalbard Global Seed Vault for plants – is located inside an abandoned coal mine on Svalbard.
The manuscripts digitized and deposited in the Arctic bunker are completely unique: from the first Bible to the first edition of the Divine Comedy, to manuscripts of works by Virgil, to ancient papyri.
These documents will be kept in the Arctic archive for at least 1000 years.
For several decades digital tape preservation has allowed the manuscripts to be microfilmed, so to have a guarantee copy of them. The manuscripts sent to Svalbard have been digitally imported with a technology patented by the company Piql As of Drammen: it allows to preserve, in a special film whose duration is guaranteed for at least 500 years, any type of data digital in a simple binary form (0101), in an open source mode, which remains unalterable and which can at the same time be recovered in the future in an easy and fast way.
The reason for this type of data conservation? Simply, but certainly wisely, out of prudence: it is best to have one more copy that keeps the digital data so painstakingly collected.
Photo: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust
