The Ciarte Digital Library (http://biblioteca.ciarte.pt), recently created, has as objectives, on the one hand, to give access to the ancient technical and artistic literature in Portuguese through volumes in pdf format resulting from purposely carried out digital restoration and, on the other hand, to make available information about these fundamental sources both for the knowledge of ideas, techniques and materials from which works of art and other cultural assets are made, and for the interpretation of the data obtained through different methodologies of the Humanities or Sciences. The presentation made here, in addition to the Library's promotion for those interested in these sources that are difficult to access, also intends to expose the principles underlying it and the technical options taken, which may be useful for similar projects. The close and prolonged contact with the great diversity of works already digitised serves as a support for the proposed typological classification of this literature.
