Digital libraries, archives and philology

Textual Scholarship together with synchronic and diachronic studies on language contact and multilingualism represent privileged sectors of application of ICT. The process of digital transition of both research objects and methodologies seems to respond to the specific needs and practices of several fields, such as Ancient and Modern Textual Criticism, Palaeography, Genetic Criticism, Bibliography, History of the Book, Papyrology, Sociolinguistics, Historical Linguistics, Dialectology. The outcomes - as digital corpora and editions, descriptive metadata, and logic representations of their semantic relationships - are increasingly creating knowledge, as well as knowledge networks. 

Planned activities are:

• Enhancement of the international quality standards for the Digital Imaging and Preservation of bookrelated sources (IFLA and FADGI), by promoting whole or selective Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) on manuscripts, fragments, printed books, documents and image sources and fostering the adoption of international standards (such as IIIF); conclusion of F.A.I.R.-compliant agreements with national and international, public and private CH institutions. 

• Setting up of open-source Web environment for the automated recognition (HTR and OCR) of the layouts and the characters of the textual sources; feeding the HTR engines for automated recognition of linguistic features and loci critici for the digital recensio.

• Creation of computational philology platforms in order to realize digital libraries and scholarly editions encoded in XML-TEI markup standard. These environments will be developed by aggregating DSLs, to ensure codicological, palaeographic, linguistic and textual enrichment of the primary sources. 

• Linguistic heritage documentation and promotion, plurilingual texts valorization, in variable genres, in Italian archives. Digital technologies mapping and application for tangible and intangible linguistic heritage. 

• Network and activity planning, archival data collection and research planning, communication campaign.

• Research protocols implementation of technological tools, pilot research studies, knowledge transfer, education activities planning, young researchers training. Months 25-36 Data transfer, results transfer, promotion activities, research products diffusion, young researchers’ empowerment, start-up activities. 

• Digital technologies empowerment to document and promote intangible linguistic heritage. Innovative application of technologies for research and scientific promotion, in relation to linguistic and cultural intangible heritage - 

• Network and activity planning, Digital technologies mapping and application for intangible linguistic heritage, communication campaign. 

• Innovative technologies empowerment for research and scientific promotion, in relation to the legacy of linguistic and cultural heritage, pilot research studies, knowledge transfer, education activities planning, young researchers training. 

• Knowledge and technical skills transfer, promotion activities, research products diffusion, young researchers’ empowerment, start-up activities.