LVDL is a digital thematic archive created for the multidisciplinary documentation arising from the scientific studies on the Venice Lagoon.

This archive provides bibliographic information, fulltexts, factual and multimedia information and includes different kind of documents: technical reports, proceedings, preprints, theses, published documents (e.g. articles), thematic maps, analitycal data, bibliographies, photographs. LVDL stands out for the originality of its thematic content and, thanks to a threefold level of semantic descriptors (free keywords, thesaurus ASFA, LC classification), can satisfy information search and retrieval by different kind of users, more or less specialized in biological and naturalistic topics.

In the first two years (2003-2004), the project included the collections of biology (in digital, scanned and/or paper format), preserved at the Vallisneri Library, Palazzo Grassi and the Chioggia Hydrobiological Station (University of Padua). From January 2005, LVDL has become a multi-disciplinary archive with the inclusion of a collection of documents stored at the Library of Geosciences, University of Padua. In the same year a further phase began involving the Museum of Natural History of Venice and its collection of historical material. Since 2011 the Library of the Botanical Garden of Padua has taken part in the archives as well.

The Veneto Regional Government, planning actions in the field of cultural services in 2010, wanted to contribute to enhance the value and accessibility of the heritage owned by the Venetian cultural institutions. Therefore, funds were provided to the project for the digitization, cataloging and online publishing of cartographic and bibliographic collections held in: the "A. Vallisneri" bio-medical library, the libraries of the Department of Geosciences and the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua and the library of the Museum of Natural History of Venice. These collections will enrich the LVDL archive.

The archive is housed in a server at the ISTI - Institute for science and technology "Alessandro Faedo" at the CNR Research Area in Pisa.


Software
Founded in 2002 as a custom extension system of ETRDL (ERCIM Technical Reference Digital Library), the European component of the Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library (NCSTRL), from December 2005 LVDL is accessible through "Octopus", a software designed and developed by ISTI, which uses the Dublin Core metadata and is OAI compliant. From 2011 LVDL is the latest version of PUMA (Publication Management), the software infrastructure for institutional and disciplinary repositories ISTI-CNR.

Contacts
"A. Vallisneri" Bio-medical Library: lvdl@bio.unipd.it
Donata Pieri, Monica Ortolan, Pierangela Mazzon

Department of Geosciences - Library: biblio.geoscienze@unipd.it
Serenella Boesso, Lorenzino Faccioli

Museum of Natural History of Venice - Library: biblioteca.msn@fmcvenezia.it
Nicola Novarini, Giacomo Masato

Botanical Garden of Padua - Library: biblioteca.ortobotanico@unipd.it
Alessandra Angarano, Paola Mario

Project coordinator: Antonella Zane - Università degli Studi di Padova
Deputy-Coordinator: Monica Ortolan - Università degli Studi di Padova
Curator of the project PuMa & Metapub: Stefania Biagioni - ISTI-CNR Pisa
System administrator: Carlo Carlesi - ISTI-CNR Pisa

Our thanks for working at the implementation of the prototype go to: Lisa Locatello, Erica Busatto, Adila Magris and the volunteers Linda Cappellato, Simone Luigi Gnoni, Marco Rosso.