Hold it All Together: a Case Study in Quality Control for Born-Digital Archiving

Policies, standards, procedures and software implemented at PAD-Pavia Archivi Digitali (Università di Pavia, Italy) to ensure correct ingest and sustainable long term preservation of digital-native literary papers of Italian writers

Archivi digitali d\u2019autore: ipotesi di lavoro

Il panel mira ad attraversare su pi\uf9 livelli il tema della conservazione del digitale nativo nell\u2019ambito degli archivi di persona, con particolare riguardo alla conservazione e gestione dei materiali di autori contemporanei. L\u2019intento \ue8 quello di avviare una riflessione condivisa con la comunit\ue0 scientifica su metodologie e strumenti da adottare in questo campo di indagine non del tutto esplorato e ancora carico di criticit\ue0 teoriche e operative. Se \ue8 chiaro ormai che la conservazione degli archivi nativi digitali \ue8 una sfida sempre pi\uf9 importante nei pi\uf9 diversi settori della nostra societ\ue0 (l\u2019ambito della pubblica amministrazione e quello forense sono tra gli esempi pi\uf9 noti), \ue8 altrettanto vero che per gli archivi di persona, nel contesto specifico della produzione letteraria, i casi di studio a nostra disposizione sono ancora sporadici e non sufficienti per individuare del tutto delle buone pratiche. Pare dunque necessario un confronto all\u2019interno della comunit\ue0 scientifica delle DH, non tanto per condividere risultati quanto per illustrare le problematiche maggiori e individuare delle ipotesi di lavoro. Il panel vuole aprirsi al dibattito con un approccio multidisciplinare, cercando di affrontare le questioni archivistiche pi\uf9 importanti relative all\u2019acquisizione e conservazione dei fondi, alla loro archiviazione, gestione e fruizione. Verr\ue0 dato particolare rilievo alla scelta di formati e standard, alla qualit\ue0 dei dati e dei servizi, ai numerosi aspetti critici sotto il profilo giuridico, alla gestione del versioning e agli strumenti per la ricerca e la didattica. Nel corso della sessione saranno esaminate due esperienze italiane: il lavoro sull\u2019archivio ibrido di Massimo Vannucci e il progetto PAD \u2013 Pavia Archivi Digitali, che ha avviato nel 2010 un percorso di sperimentazione su archivi di scrittori contemporanei, perfezionando negli anni alcune strategie per le fasi di preparazione dei conferimenti e acquisizione dei materiali

POLARIX: a pathfinder mission of X-ray polarimetry

Since the birth of X-ray astronomy, spectral, spatial and timing observation improved dramatically, procuring a wealth of information on the majority of the classes of the celestial sources. Polarimetry, instead, remained basically unprobed. X-ray polarimetry promises to provide additional information procuring two new observable quantities, the degree and the angle of polarization. POLARIX is a mission dedicated to X-ray polarimetry. It exploits the polarimetric response of a Gas Pixel Detector, combined with position sensitivity, that, at the focus of a telescope, results in a huge increase of sensitivity. Three Gas Pixel Detectors are coupled with three X-ray optics which are the heritage of JET-X mission. POLARIX will measure time resolved X-ray polarization with an angular resolution of about 20 arcsec in a field of view of 15 arcmin $\times$ 15 arcmin and with an energy resolution of 20 % at 6 keV. The Minimum Detectable Polarization is 12 % for a source having a flux of 1 mCrab and 10^5 s of observing time. The satellite will be placed in an equatorial orbit of 505 km of altitude by a Vega launcher.The telemetry down-link station will be Malindi. The pointing of POLARIX satellite will be gyroless and it will perform a double pointing during the earth occultation of one source, so maximizing the scientific return. POLARIX data are for 75 % open to the community while 25 % + SVP (Science Verification Phase, 1 month of operation) is dedicated to a core program activity open to the contribution of associated scientists. The planned duration of the mission is one year plus three months of commissioning and SVP, suitable to perform most of the basic science within the reach of this instrument.Comment: 42 pages, 28 figure

XIPE: the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer

X-ray polarimetry, sometimes alone, and sometimes coupled to spectral and temporal variability measurements and to imaging, allows a wealth of physical phenomena in astrophysics to be studied. X-ray polarimetry investigates the acceleration process, for example, including those typical of magnetic reconnection in solar flares, but also emission in the strong magnetic fields of neutron stars and white dwarfs. It detects scattering in asymmetric structures such as accretion disks and columns, and in the so-called molecular torus and ionization cones. In addition, it allows fundamental physics in regimes of gravity and of magnetic field intensity not accessible to experiments on the Earth to be probed. Finally, models that describe fundamental interactions (e.g. quantum gravity and the extension of the Standard Model) can be tested. We describe in this paper the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer (XIPE), proposed in June 2012 to the first ESA call for a small mission with a launch in 2017 but not selected. XIPE is composed of two out of the three existing JET-X telescopes with two Gas Pixel Detectors (GPD) filled with a He-DME mixture at their focus and two additional GPDs filled with pressurized Ar-DME facing the sun. The Minimum Detectable Polarization is 14 % at 1 mCrab in 10E5 s (2-10 keV) and 0.6 % for an X10 class flare. The Half Energy Width, measured at PANTER X-ray test facility (MPE, Germany) with JET-X optics is 24 arcsec. XIPE takes advantage of a low-earth equatorial orbit with Malindi as down-link station and of a Mission Operation Center (MOC) at INPE (Brazil).Comment: 49 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables. Paper published in Experimental Astronomy http://link.springer.com/journal/1068

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE): Technical Overview

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) will expand the information space for study of cosmic sources, by adding linear polarization to the properties (time, energy, and position) observed in x-ray astronomy. Selected in 2017 January as a NASA Astrophysics Small Explorer (SMEX) mission, IXPE will be launched into an equatorial orbit in 2021. The IXPE mission will provide scientifically meaningful measurements of the x-ray polarization of a few dozen sources in the 2-8 keV band, including polarization maps of several x-ray-bright extended sources and phase-resolved polarimetry of many bright pulsating x-ray sources

XIPE: the x-ray imaging polarimetry explorer

XIPE, the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer, is a mission dedicated to X-ray Astronomy. At the time of writing XIPE is in a competitive phase A as fourth medium size mission of ESA (M4). It promises to reopen the polarimetry window in high energy Astrophysics after more than 4 decades thanks to a detector that efficiently exploits the photoelectric effect and to X-ray optics with large effective area. XIPE uniqueness is time-spectrally-spatially- resolved X-ray polarimetry as a breakthrough in high energy astrophysics and fundamental physics. Indeed the payload consists of three Gas Pixel Detectors at the focus of three X-ray optics with a total effective area larger than one XMM mirror but with a low weight. The payload is compatible with the fairing of the Vega launcher. XIPE is designed as an observatory for X-ray astronomers with 75 % of the time dedicated to a Guest Observer competitive program and it is organized as a consortium across Europe with main contributions from Italy, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, Poland, Sweden

Conservare e rendere accessibile un archivio letterario digitale: il caso PAD - Pavia Archivi Digitali

Problematiche relative all'acquisizione, descrizione, accesso e conservazione di archivi letterari digitali nativ

Se i bit non bastano: pratiche di conservazione del contesto di origine per gli archivi letterari nativi digitali

PAD – Pavia Archivi Digitali was created in 2009, alongside the Centre for Research in the Manuscript Tradition of Modern and Contemporary Authors, with the aim of acquiring, preserving and giving access to born- digital papers of contemporary writers and journalists. The archives which were bestowed to PAD so far show a variety of features involving a considerable effort in defining and fine-tuning both the ingest procedures and the management of the preserved papers life-cycle. One of the crucial issues is the preliminary analysis of the logical and technical structure of these archives. For this purpose the writer is interviewed and more information is collected through a specific questionnaire. By combining the two one gains a valuable insight into his or her working methods and files arrangement logic. The literature on the subject is still quite scarce, since researchers have been more keen to focus either on traditional archives or on digital archives though characterized by a greater stability. To share reflections emerged in response to the various acquisitions is therefore the aim of this paper. Nato nel 2009 per affiancare lo storico Fondo Manoscritti dell’Università di Pavia, PAD - Pavia Archivi Digitali si occupa di acquisire, conservare e rendere accessibili gli archivi nativi digitali di scrittori e giornalisti contemporanei. I fondi fino a oggi acquisiti si sono rivelati molto diversi tra loro, e hanno contribuito via via a precisare e perfezionare le procedure di ingest e la gestione del ciclo di vita dei materiali conservati. Una delle questioni a nostro avviso più importanti riguarda l’analisi preliminare della struttura degli archivi – sia dal punto di vista logico, che informatico – e il colloquio con lo scrittore, a cui viene somministrato un questionario, che si sta rivelando molto utile per comprendere il metodo di lavoro e l’organizzazione dei materiali. Non sono molte le indicazioni che la letteratura offre al riguardo, essendosi quest’ultima prevalentemente occupata di archivi tradizionali o di archivi digitali caratterizzati da una maggiore stabilità di quelli letterari. L’intervento mira a mettere a disposizione della comunità le riflessioni maturate nel corso delle acquisizioni.