Università degli studi di Urbino, Istituto di studi per la tutela dei beni archivistici e librari.
The Institute was created in 1998 to co-ordinate all the research and educational activities within the University of Urbino in the area of archival and library heritage, with specific reference to the creation, access, and preservation of the documentary heritage.

The Institute as part of the University of Urbino organises special courses at the master level and manages national and international research programmes in the areas of archival science, electronic record-keeping systems, librarianship, information studies, and legal studies for cultural heritage and digital preservation. The Institute has been involved in many national and international projects specifically related to the preservation environment:

• as partner in the CASPAR project with a specific role in the definition of an adequate methodology (concepts of authenticity and provenance and related tools), the analysis of the state of art, training methods and activities
• as partner in the ERPANET project (a network of excellence in the area of digital preservation funded by the European Commission)
• as partner in the DELOS2 project specifically in the Digital preservation cluster
• as Italian co-ordinator in the InterPARES project 1 (1999-2001) and 2 (2002-2006) for the long-term preservation of authentic electronic records
• in the NPACI environment with reference to the NARA-DOCT project for the preservation of Persistent Archival Objects conducted by the USA National Archives and the S. Diego Supercomputer Centre
• in the project funded by the Italian Ministry for University and scientific research in a industrial research project (3D Informatica, CNR, Consorzio Roma Ricerche) to run as test bed in evolving an Information Retrieval application into a XML product specifically dedicated to the digital resource creation and preservation
• for the preparation of the dossiers on the policies for preservation existing at European level and on digital preservation disasters and emergencies for the International Conference of Florence on Digital Preservation /16-17 October 2003): agreement signed with Istituto Centrale per la Catalogazione (ICCU), Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali

The institute is also running many projects at application level. Among the others:

• to define a classification scheme and an electronic record-keeping standard for Sogei, the public software house of the Ministry for Finance,
• to define the archival functional requirements for the electronic records systems for Prisma Engineering (Filenet distributor);
• to create an Italian network for disseminating good practice and professional training in business records management (Centro per l’innovazione nell’impresa, Milan).

Maria Guercio
Maria Guercio, director of the Istituto di studi per la tutela dei beni archivistici e librari and chair of the “Corso di laurea in scienze dei beni culturali”, joined the University of Urbino as Associate Professor in archival science and electronic records in 1998. She became Full Professor in 2001. Since 2002 she is the vice-Dean for Informatics and e-learning projects of the University. She worked at the National Archives from 1978, then for 10 years in the Soprintendenza archivistica of Rome. In 1987 she joined the Central Office of Archives, was Director of the International Service for the Ministry for Cultural Heritage in 1992 and in 1996 she took responsibility for international activities of the National Archives, focused on the EU and Council of Europe. She represented Italy on the ICA Committee on Current Records (1989-1992), and on the ICA Commission for Program Management (1992-1996).