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Principles of digital Library Science

People

Weston P. G.

Course director

Description

Language
Italian. However, the reading list may include a number of English texts.

Knowledges
Although no specific knowledge is required, a basic understanding of the electronic treatment of data is desirable.

Goals

The participation in the planned activities (frontal classes, lightning-talks, and laboratory works, as well as individual study) should enable student:

  • to acquire and to put in practice methods, tools and standards extensively implemented;
  • to develop projects aiming at exploiting and circulating cultural heritage items in digital format;
  • to share and to co-ordinate working groups.

Contents

The dissemination of digital products in the last three decades has represented a radical change in the way information is created, circulated and shared by the users of the web. Two issues will be addressed in particular:

  • the use of digital media in the creation of textual material under various forms (blogs, websites, etc.);
  • the creation of digital libraries by cultural agencies (libraries, archives, art galleries, museums, film and music libraries, performing arts) aiming at exploiting their collections.

Students will create a virtual exhibition prototype on the theme of the year and publish it on an extensively used platform.

Thus, three main approaches will be followed:

  • technical and methodological, including basic definitions, as well as the observation of contexts in which digital library projects are commonly developed;
  • practical, consisting in the creation of a virtual exhibition, a project which will include strategies which should increase its identity and visibility in the net;the presentation of resources, standards, and products by means of lighting talks assigned to students.
  • the presentation of resources, standards, and products by means of lighting talks assigned to students.

Connection with the academic year's topic: "Time, space, sense"
Texts by and on Eugène Minkowski, a French psychiatrist of Jewish Polish origin who is known for his incorporation of phenomenology into psychopathology and for exploring the notion of "lived time", will inspire the creation of a virtual exhibition. In Le Temps vécu. Études phénoménologique et psychopathologiques – Lived Time. Phenomenological and Psychopathological Studies (1933) Minkowski sought to use phenomenology as an approach to psychopathology, arguing that the pathology of patients should always be interpreted in light of their subjective experience of time. Based on this idea, he distinguished between rational time (world-time) and lived time (ego-time), and gave new perspectives and meanings to concepts such as Bergson's account of elan vital (vital energy), present, past, and future, hope and desire, activity and expectation. The virtual exhibition will try and show how in the course of centuries the category of time has influenced both the artistic and the literary production, as well as impacting on the science of complexity and phenomenological psychiatry.

Methods

The course is organized according to a mixed approach.
Frontal classes will include a critical presentation of issues concerning digital library projects: definitions, national and international standards, tools, organizational and management models, best practices and exemplar realizations, critical findings, agencies, cooperation and sharing of data and services, reuse of data and licenses, medium-long term preservation.
Each issue will include the provision of a list of printed and digital resources drawn in cooperation with the students.
Quality assessment and visibility of digital resources will also be addressed.

In the laboratory part of the course, students will cooperatively design and develop a virtual exhibition based on the theme of the year.. An active participation is therefore recommended. Students will be asked to discuss with their peers their share in the common work.
Working as a team will play a key role in testing the students' ability to interact, to share, and to reflect critically on their own work as well as on the work of others (practising peer-review).

Examination mode

Three factors will be considered in evaluating a student:

  • the creation of the virtual exhibition: the student's ability to work as a team, to take responsibility for the production of specific parts of the exhibition (also in consideration of his/her curriculum and cultural interests), and to plan and coordinate in turn the tasks carried out by the working group, will be prevailing on the intrinsic quality of the digital product;
  • the lightning-talk: the student's ability to introduce effectively the features of a digital resource within the allotted time;
  • the submission of a paper: the understanding of concepts set out throughout the course, as well as his/her ability to analyze and evaluate the quality of a resource in terms of sustainability of the organizational model, reliability of data, and accessibility of services provided to the users.

Bibliography

Selected texts from:

  • Louis Rosenfeld - Peter Morville, Architettura dell'informazione per il World Wide Web, Tecniche Nuove
  • Marina De Rossi - Corrado Petrucco Le narrazioni digitali per l'educazione e la formazione, Roma, Carocci
  • ICCU - ICAR, in collab. with OTEBAC, Mostre virtuali online. Linee guida per la realizzazione
  • OTEBAC, Manuale per la qualità dei siti web pubblici culturali
  • Il web e gli studi storici. Guida critica all'uso della rete. A cura di Rolando Minuti. Roma, Carocci, 2015

Other material, relevant for the theme of the year, will be made available through the educational platform of the university.

Education