The University Library System has launched projects for the digitalisation of pieces from the university's special collections , selected to fulfill the purposes of supporting teaching, research and third mission activities at the University of Ferrara.
This digitalisation both facilitates greater awareness of the special collections and contributes to their conservation, as it allows us to limit the amount the artefacts are handled thanks to the use of their digital images, mostly freely available with licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 through the open access portal Virtual Heritage Unife (VHU).
This activity is based on awareness of the digital libraries as «services that, through the promotion of access to knowledge, aim to facilitate the full exercise of citizenship rights and support educational, school, academic and professional development paths, encouraging people's continued education» - according to the fifth principle of the New Manifesto for Digital Libraries (2020).