Online Resources for the Humanities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.
International Seminar   May 7-8, 2004

ABSTRACT: The Digital Archives of the Center for Computational Processing of Texts and Images in the Italian Tradition (Scuola Normale di Pisa)

In my presentation I will describe the various ongoing projects currently pursued at the CTL, with particular emphasis on two projects typical of the Center's work. Founded in 2000 at the Scuola Normale in Pisa, under the guidance of Professor Lina Bolzoni, the center coordinates several research projects, some of which are about to be published; organizes conferences, specialization courses and seminars; and promotes continued literary and artistic discussions.

In line with Bolzoni's research, the unifying line of inquiry that guides CTL's work is an investigation of the complex relationships between words and images in literary and artistic tradition across various time periods and genres.

The CTL marries literary research and information technologies, aiming to create new research tools for scholars. With an eye to interdisciplinarity, the contents of searchable online archives permits us to reconstruct various paths of intersection between linquistic and figurative codes, and to analyze the less well-known areas of inter-expressive experimentation.

The dream as told in modern literature. This is an indexed archive (available online) containing passages from texts and, soon, images, in which dreams are narrated and described. The corpus, continually expanded and updated, is comprised of narrative texts (European and from outside Europe) between the Middle Ages and now, which contain textual segments narrating dreams.

Corpus of medieval Italian signed works. A rich multimedia archive, to be published online in September, of "signed" (containing inscriptions of their makers' names) medieval works of art, created between the VII and the XIV centuries. The archive, consisting of an extensive corpus of images and texts, will be searchable in multiple ways.

Petrarch and the allegorical arts. This research project, which will soon be published online, proposes to investigate the relationship of Francesco Petrarca with the allegorical arts, through different research paths: the poet's visual culture, as well as the intersection of literary experience (classics, fathers, "moderns") and direct experience (relationships with the artists of his own time, as well as collected and observed objects) in his reflections upon art.

ABY (Towards an atlas of images about memory). The center is working on the publication of a database containing texts and images gathered from the rich tradition of printed tracts on the art of memory, from the period between 1500 and 1700, both in Latin and in the vernacular. The project consists of two parts: the first, iconographic, contains the corpus of images that accompanied mnemotechnical tracts; the second, literary, offers full texts of those same documents. The end objective is to create a unitary archive in which the images and the texts are searchable together, using the same criteria.

Vittorio Alfieri. Finally, the CTL, on the occasion of the 1999-2003 celebrations in honor of the Italian poet Vittorio Alfieri, is working on a CD-ROM dedicated to his life and work.

Starting in 2004, in collaboration with the CNR (National Center of Research), the CTL will commence work on a pilot project financed by the European Union and named DILIGENT (A DIgital Library Infrastructure on Grid ENable Technology). The center is making available its research and its multidisciplinary archives created in recent years for perusal by the CNR and for experimenting with the innovative technology of digital libraries.

Within the project ARTE ("Research and Technological Applications of Digital Editing"), financed by the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research, the CTL is organizing a specialization course titled "Web design methods and practice. Scientific research and communication in large institutions (museums, research centers and libraries)".

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