Method
Six stages, none of which can be skipped.
What follows is not a promotional description of the process but the contractual articulation of the service. Each stage produces deliverable, verifiable documentation; omitting a stage affects the later ones in predictable ways, which is why it is stated at tender stage rather than passed over in silence.
01 · Survey
Establishing the facts.
A visit to the repository precedes any quantification. Extent is measured in linear metres, the condition of the material and its containers is assessed, ambient temperature and humidity are recorded, and any holdings under legal protection or subject to access restrictions are identified.
The presence of earlier arrangements, even partial or abandoned ones, is also recorded: identifying them shapes the whole intervention, since a historical arrangement, however imperfect, is itself evidence and cannot be erased without justification.
Documentation delivered
- Survey report with measured extent
- Condition assessment, identifying material at risk
- Schedule of holdings under legal protection
- Work plan divided into lots with timings
What this stage prevents
A lump-sum quotation based on declared rather than measured extent. The gap between assumed and actual extent is the leading cause of dispute and of missed funding deadlines.
02 · Arrangement
Ordering by archival method.
Arrangement proceeds from the principle of provenance and respect for original order. Series are reconstructed, the hierarchical structure of the collection is defined, units are described and final references are assigned.
Where the original order is irretrievably lost, the reconstruction is declared and justified in the archival note, stating the criteria adopted. A disposal proposal is drawn up in parallel under the applicable retention schedules and submitted to the Archival and Bibliographic Superintendency: no destruction takes place before authorisation is granted.
Documentation delivered
- Structure of the collection in series and sub-series
- Item-level descriptions
- Disposal proposal with itemised schedule
- Archival note on the criteria adopted
What this stage prevents
Digitising a disordered collection. The result is a mass of images with no descriptive anchor, which the institution will have to bring to order later and at greater cost, having meanwhile lost the opportunity to discard what should never have been reproduced.
03 · Capture
Reproduction calibrated to the material.
Equipment is chosen for the type of material, not for expected throughput: production scanners for loose current files, planetary contactless scanners for bound, fragile or rare material.
Resolution and colour management are defined at project stage and verified at every session using colour targets included in the frame. Chain of custody is logged at each handover, with records signed by both parties.
Documentation delivered
- Master files in a preservation format with embedded colour profile
- Access derivatives
- Session reports with colour target readings
- Signed records of receipt and return
What this stage prevents
Capture at a resolution too low for optical character recognition, forcing the whole operation to be repeated once the material has already been returned to the store.
04 · Extraction
From text to structured data.
Optical character recognition across the whole mass is followed by extraction of the fields that matter for the material in question: reference number, holder, dates, subject of the proceeding, land parcel references.
Each extracted field carries a confidence score. This is not a technical detail: it allows staff to tell which values need checking from those that do not, instead of imposing either total verification or total trust.
Documentation delivered
- Recognised text, searchable and embedded in the access file
- Structured fields in an open format
- Confidence score per field
- Accuracy measured on an agreed statistical sample
05 · Preservation
Compliant deposit.
Submission packages are formed under the applicable technical rules, with the required metadata and signatures, and transmitted to the preservation system nominated by the institution.
Ownership of the data remains with the institution, which may obtain full export in open formats at any time and at no cost. This is a contractual condition, not a matter of the supplier’s goodwill.
Documentation delivered
- Submission packages compliant with AgID guidelines
- Preservation metadata
- Deposit outcome report
- Manual of operations performed
06 · Retrieval
The collection becomes usable.
Compliant preservation discharges the legal obligation but does not make a collection efficiently consultable. Loading it into Anamnesis enables querying by extracted field, semantic search, geographic anchoring of values that carry a territorial reference, and authenticated access via SPID and CIE.
This is the stage at which the investment becomes measurable: retrieval time for a file falls from days to seconds, and that difference can be documented for funding reports.
Documentation delivered
- Collection queryable in the platform
- Access profiles by department and role
- Consultation log
- Staff training on the tool
Stages can be separated, with one caveat
Individual stages may be awarded separately, and in some cases that is reasonable. Separate execution does carry rework costs, which are quantified and stated at tender stage rather than emerging once work is under way.
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