IPSA: A Digital Archive to Support Scientic Research

he work reported in this paper has been carried out in the context of a multidisciplinary project, named Ipsa, which has been launched at the University of Padua in 2002. Aim of the project is the design and the construction of a digital library of drawings and illustrations of historic documents, where the digital library is constructed for use of researchers of art and history of scientific illustration. This paper presents the first results of the ongoing project on the development of the digital archive of herbals, that are manuscripts containing hand drawings of real plants. The paper has a specific focus on the user requirements analysis, which has been conducted with a user-centred approach. According to user requirements, we designed tools to provide researchers with novel ways of accessing the digital manuscripts and sharing and transferring knowledge in a collaborative environment.