The Project |
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The XXth century has been defined the "century of periodicals", thus underlining the fact that, since the Age of Enlightenment, periodicals have played a leading role in Europe, mirroring and shaping the cultural dynamics of our recent history. On the other hand, problems of preservation and of accessibility endager this important material and cultural heritage. Thanks to modern digital technologies, it is possible to perfectly reproduce any journal, and, consequently, to easily preserve and have access to the texts they contain. This is the idea that drives the project: C.I.R.C.E.'s archive provides an index to the contents of many periodicals, together with the anastatic and the text-format reproductions of their pages. The index gives you the possibility to easily search by author, text, translator, etc.; the anastatic copy shows the original layout of the chosen periodical or page; the text-format copy is useful for a full-text search, and it allows you to extract a passage from the selected article. Our project is ambitious, in particular if we consider the European perspective adopted. For this reason, we have been working by degrees, first of all, individuating and focusing on specific cultural areas; then, cooperating with other research groups, in Italy and abroad. The international conference "Le riviste dell'Europa letteraria" ("European Literary Periodicals", Trento, Italy, December 1999) gave us the chance to interact with colleagues from other European universities, and to start creating a net of collaborators. Eventually, all partners should refer to one public website, containing the results of our team work. The conference also demonstrated the richness of this field of study, in particular when focusing on the connections among periodicals and among their contributors (i.e. collaborations, translations of or articles on foreign authors, similar programmes or cultural debates). C.I.R.C.E.'s purpose is not merely to file and preserve European periodical publications; it is also to create a centre of study that, by providing the basic tools for the research, promotes publications, meetings, and congresses on this important cultural field. |
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