The Digital Archives on Monasterium.Net
Research has proven that, thanks to Web 2.0, the digital archives show a lot of advantages: modes allowing to include abstracts, editions, and works in progress; a series of collaborative activities unthinkable in a printed edition; search engines with useful tools for users and editors of digital archives in order to gather real-time information; and the application of XML language which consents the exploitation of data in other contexts or information systems, ensuring the digital edition’s interoperability.
For the most UNINA has already achieved several important experiences in the last few years, just in the field of the Monasterium project. It has been part of the Monasterium project (coordinated by ICARUS – International Centre of Archival Research, in Vienna) since 2007.
The project is inspired by a wide network of Academic and Archival institutions of Middle-Western Europe which began to digitize and study the medieval parchments of different monastic and ecclesiastic archives besides convening in an annual meeting and organizing numerous stages, workshops and other international meetings.
The intense work of the almost sixty over ten European Countries partners to the project has especially come to the website Monasterium.net, where a great number of digital archives made of more than 200,000 pictures of medieval and modern charters are available.
Within the website Monasterium.net, entering the public area in the section MOM.CA, you can view thousands of parchments and all the info about them thanks to an advanced surfing system and also process documents data through the login area.
This operation, which is just possible in the personal area, is realized through EditMOM, an XML editor based on Java and implemented by Cologne University, which allows a useful collaborative activity among different users, called editors and moderators.
The editors who can access the EditMOM personal area are archivists, scholars, students of various European countries, coordinated by moderators who are experts in Archival Science and Diplomatics. Every day, they offer a big range of products online, going from simple information contained in lists and tools kept in the Archives (even only place names and dates), to complete edition of charters provided by Diplomatics analysis.
MOM.CA activity is inspired by three basic principles: recovering a large amount of information which can be accessed via web at any moment and in any place by everybody 24 hours a day; allowing the free circulation of knowledge among all people interested in charters who can download digital high definition pictures for free; although a common international goal, consenting easy access to the online charters data by respecting the different European languages and ways the archival description and edition of charters were done.
The Digital Archives on Monasterium.net promoted by UNINA
- L’Archivio virtuale del monastero dei SS. Pietro e Sebastiano, by Antonella Ambrosio, in collaboration with the Master in Library and Archival Science and Methodology of the Research of the University of Naples Federico II, with the project FIXO (Department of Health, Department of Employment and Welfare – Direzione Generale per le Politiche, per l’Orientamento e la Formazione; Italia Lavoro; UNINA), together with Maria Rosaria De Divitiis for the Archivio di Stato di Napoli, with Francesco Di Vaio and Valentina Di Girolamo, with Sonia Severino for the Liceo classico Vittorio Emanuele II di Napoli, with the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria.
- L’Archivio virtuale del monastero di S. Maria della Grotta, a cura di Antonella Ambrosio. More details on this project here.
- Biblioteca del Seminario vescovile di Teggiano (SA), in collaboration with Carmine Carlone and Teresa Strocchia for ICARUS.
- Archivio Privato Carrano, in collaboration with Teresa Strocchia for ICARUS. XML encoding of the Digital Archives by Maria Rosaria Falcone for ICARUS.
- Archivio di Stato di Benevento, Fondo Notai, in collaboration with Valeria Taddeo and Giuseppe Vetrone for the State Archives of Benevento, with Maria Giuseppina Pedicini for ICARUS.
- Archivio di Stato di Benevento, Fondo Pedicini, in collaboration with Valeria Taddeo and Giuseppe Vetrone for the State Archives of Benevento, with Maria Giuseppina Pedicini for ICARUS.
- Archivio storico diocesano di Reggio Calabria-Bova, Fondo diplomatico, in collaboration with Maria Pia Mazzitelli and Erika Gitto for the Diocesan Archives. More details on this project here.
- Fondo pergamenaceo della Biblioteca della Società Napoletana di Storia Patria (secc. X-XIX) (a cura di A. Ambrosio).
- Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Archivio del Monastero di S. Agostino Maggiore (a cura di Rosalba di Meglio)
- Archivo Historico Municipal de Escalona Toledo (a cura di Susana Cabezas Fontanilla e Nicolás Ávila Seoane, in progress)
- Archivo de la catedral de Cuenca (in progress)
- Archivio di Stato di Cagliari
