GLAM/Newsletter/March 2024/Contents/Italy report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIV, Issue III, March 2024

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Italy report

GLAM call winner projects

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By Marta Arosio

The winners of Wikimedia Italia's GLAM call 2024 have been selected. These are nine projects selected out of over sixty applications received, that will support digitization and sharing projects of collections owned by large and small cultural institutions scattered throughout Italy.

3D scans by Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa

Established in 1591 by Ferdinando I de' Medici, the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa is one of the oldest in the world and preserves a heritage of great historical and scientific importance, spanning six centuries of history. The Museum has recently opened a Sketchfab profile in which it has made some 3D models of its collections available for free download to students, researchers and enthusiasts. These are 50 models of current and fossil cetacean skeletons displayed in the museum's Cetacean Gallery and other specimens belonging to the zoological and paleontological collections.

With the new funded project, the museum wants to extend this type of sharing of museum heritage also to smaller-sized finds, integrating the use of latest generation high resolution 3D scanners. The new and existing models will be published on Wikimedia Commons, for a total of one hundred models.

Incunabula and miniatures digitized in Brindisi

The Annibale De Leo Archiepiscopal Library of Brindisi plans to digitalize and publish eight manuscripts and seventeen rare incunabula. The eight manuscripts date back between the 13th and 15th centuries. Written in Italian Gothic character and dedicated to very varied themes, they are known for the "maniculae", dating back to the 16th century: hands drawn along the margins of the text to highlight a word or a phrase, but also for the miniatures of Byzantine and Giotto style. Among the incunabula that will be digitized there will also be the Confessionale Defecerunt, of Sant'Antonino archbishop of Florence, recognized as of extreme value by Dennis E. Rhodes, former director of the British Library, whose very rich collection is missing four of the texts preserved in Brindisi.

Opening an ecclesiastical directory

The Association of Italian Ecclesiastical Librarians (ABEI) is the author of ACOLIT, a list of authorities for Catholic authors and liturgical works, useful to all librarians in their daily work of conservation, research, and cataloging of works. With the OpenAcolit project, ABEI aims to transform this directory into Linked Open Data format, mainly utilizing Wikidata and Wikibase.

Thanks to the support of Wikimedia Italy, it will be possible to organize study days on these topics to expand the network of collaboration among expert Italian librarians and practitioners of theological disciplines, to complete the data transfer consistently. Potentially, OpenAcolit could also accommodate non-Italian forms of access points, becoming an international tool.

Urbino's typographic art on Wikipedia

The University Library of Urbino will use the funding to digitize 300 documents related to Urbino's typographic art, developed between the XVI and XVIII centuries. Print laboratories spread in Urbino from the Renaissance, with the first duchy typography born in Cagli in 1475. The documents will also be useful for creating oenriching Wikipedia entries dedicated to the subject.

Rediscovering a university venue in Turin

The Library of Economics and Management of the University of Turin will use Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikisource to document and enhance the history of the "Poveri Vecchi" building, a noteworthy but little known civic monument, originally built as a residence for the elderly and now a university venue soon to be restored. Through a wiki excursion and involving professional photographers, the current state of the building will be documented. An open event will be dedicated to the presentation of Wikisource, used to digitize the most significant works of the historian and economist Giuseppe Prato, belonging to the "Prato Fund" of the library. New pages on Wikipedia will be dedicated to the scholar and other colleagues associated with the University of Turin, or existing ones will be improved.

Rebuilding the children's library of Bologna

Inaugurated in 1954, the Children's Library of the Giardini Margherita in Bologna was one of its kind in Italy. The project by the Libraries and Cultural Welfare Sector of the Municipality of Bologna plans to digitize the handwritten entrance registers of the library, closed in 1977, but whose heritage is now mostly preserved in Salaborsa Ragazzi. In addition to virtually rebuilding the Children's Library by fully digitizing a selection of texts no longer under copyright, a selection of Wikipedia entries will be created with corresponding Wikidata elements of authors or publishing houses connected to the project themes. A path will also be created with a high school class for the transcription on Wikisource of a text among those digitized.

The Museums of Strada Nuova in Genoa on Wikipedia

In Genoa, Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco, and Palazzo Doria-Tursi are the Museums of Strada Nuova and constitute a single exhibition path dedicated to ancient art, preserving a varied artistic and cultural heritage of international relevance. The Museums are part of the Rolli System, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and each year welcome thousands of visitors. Thanks to the project, photos of the original museum setup curated by Franco Albini in the post-war period will be digitized. The Wikipedia entries dedicated to the museums will also be enriched, including photographic material (paintings, architectural images of interiors and exteriors, sculptures, frescoes, and other objects from the collections).

From La Sapienza to Commons, Ugolini's photos

Luigi Maria Ugolini was an Italian archaeologist of the first half of the twentieth century, among the most renowned of his time, active in Malta and especially in Albania, where he founded the Italian Archaeological Mission and conducted excavations and research in the main archaeological sites of the southern part of the country, especially Phoinike and Butrint, both sites rediscovered by him and the latter now inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Thanks to the project proposed by the Department of History Cultures Religions Art Entertainment of Sapienza University of Rome, it will be possible to digitize and publish on Wikimedia Commons Ugolini's archive, which includes images of sites and archaeological finds related to the scholar's study trips and research, many taken and annotated by himself on the back. These documents will be useful to scholars of antiquity, as well as historians of the twentieth century intending to reconstruct a difficult and much-discussed historical moment of Italian archaeological research at home and abroad.

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