We describe a project, fully formalized, to create a “Service Center” for ancient books and manuscripts, in the “Biblioteca dei Girolamini” Library of Girolamini in Naples, Italy. This unique library hosts about 180.000 pieces, 500 of which are medieval manuscripts, 120 incunabulum, 5.000 editions of the 16th century – among others, as well as an ancient Musical Archive. The library is located in the heart of Naples, in a magnificent place where a series of initiative are already taking place, as a collaboration between the University of Naples Federico II and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. All these features make Library of Girolamini a rare case study in the field of ancient books. The project aims at a complete digitization of the books; however, the important part of the project is the creation of full sets of metadata with a complete history of the documents and of the studies about the document itself. The first books to be considered will be a set of 512 manuscripts of the XIII century, e.g. a fully illustrated Divina Commedia or Seneca’s tragedies with miniature paintings. There will be two main streams of work: a conservation and study of ancient books through the digitization in a proper file format namely the FITS Flexible Image Transport System; b grant the access to this information in the Big Data era using such technologies as Internet of Things and Machine Lerning in order to identify the ancient book and categorize it. This project will also allow to many young students to put in practice the studies within the “Scuola di Alta Formazione in Storia e Filologia del manoscritto e del libro antico”, formally started in the year 2018. The access to information will allow, for example, the extraction and classification of figures, and the automatic recognition of the device used pc, tablet, smartphone and its resolution.
