The Story |
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(by Corrado Donati) In May 1996, the University of Trento organised the conference "Umanesimo & Informatica. Le nuove frontiere della ricerca e della didattica nel campo degli studi umanistici", where a group of Italian and foreign scholars met to discuss about classical and computer studies. Contributions focused on different aspects of the use of modern technologies in computer-assisted literary research, and on topics such as: procedures, software, reliability and compatibility of digital storage-supports, and the uncertain future of electronic publications. On that occasion, Roberto Busa, a forerunner in this field (he made his Index Thomisticus when computers still used magnetic thin film storage), stressed the importance of practical experience both for research activities and for problem-solving. He also underlined the ambitiousness of projects in this field. We were still at the beginning. However, conscious of our lack of experience and of the disadvantages it brings, we started thinking about a new research project on periodicals, in particular on those journals whose cultural and literary relevance is generally acknowledged by critics. Regardless of their cultural relevance, often these periodicals are stored in stacks, in a precarious state of preservation and almost forgotten. For many years now I have been a member of the editorial staff of the series "Indici ragionati dei periodici letterari europei" ("Annotated Indexes of European Literary Periodicals"), launched by Mario Petrucciani and now edited by Antonio Barbuto. Thanks to this background, I have realised that it is necessary to substitute the existing typed files, by making use of the new computer technologies, in order to create not only indexes of periodicals but also their digital reproductions. Consequently, it will possible to easily consult perfect and complete reproductions, and, thus, to preserve the original paper documents. This is the ambitious project I presented at the conference in Trento. In spite of its ambitiousness, many contributors welcomed this project. They subscribed the final report in which father Busa himself expressed his hope that the project would find the necessary financial support. This story, and much more, can be found in the volume Atti ("Conference Proceedings", Metauro edizioni, Fossombrone, 1997), edited by Daniela Gruber and Patrick Pauletto (who constituted the very first research team). Only in 1998 - thanks to the financial contribution of the Provincia Autonoma di Trento (The Autonomous Province of Trento), and to the support of the Department of Philological and Historical Studies of the University of Trento - we were able to start, despite our lack of experience in this specific field. For this reason we decided to start with a weekly seminar on periodicals, held at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy for a selected group of students from the course of Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature of the University of Trento. Some of them wrote their theses on periodicals. Vittorio Carrara, from the Faculty's Library, also contributed to this seminar, by helping us to define journals' cataloguing and filing criteria. Students also had practical training, working on "Fiera letteraria". Gian Paolo Renello held a course on the relationship between computer science and classical studies, a relationship that is at the core of our project. At the same time, we supplied our laboratory with three computers and scanners. Thanks to Paolo Chistè, person in charge of the Department digital microfilm laboratory, we could interconnect our equipment, and, consequently, we could digitally file the first images taken from periodicals. This is the story of the past two years. My purpose in writing it is to show that the project started from a simple idea, that maybe others had before, but could never put into practice. Our experience shows that Faculties of Letters can actually join together didactics, research and practical experimentation, and also traditional teaching methods and computer-assisted research tools. I would like to note that the first small group of willing but still inexpert students is now part of our permanent work-team. At least 15 people have been working for a year and a half with no other reward than the pride to see this challenging project - that they called C.I.R.C.E. - start and develop. They want to be protagonists, and not passive subjects, of a learning process that involves their University education and their post-graduate career. |
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