Gorgolini: “Some funds are stored in less than ideal conditions, we need to intervene”
“We need to develop awareness that some of the documentary nuclei produced by San Marino politicians, among which we can find written documents, photographs, posters and hundreds of analogue and digital audiovisual media, are at risk of dispersion”. This, in the words of professor Luca Gorgolini, is the most urgent dynamic that emerged from research by the University of the Republic of San Marino which led to the publication of a book in which a total of thirty funds are analysed, outlining their size and characteristics, state of conservation, possible possibility of consultation and more.
The volume, entitled "Politics in San Marino - guide to the archives of political parties and personalities", will be presented tomorrow, 20 October, to the Captains Regent Filippo Tamagnini and Gaetano Troina in a hearing scheduled at Palazzo Pubblico. In the over 150 pages of the book, a historical and cultural heritage currently in the hands of institutional acronyms, associations, families and individuals is x-rayed: "Through this work - explains Gorgolini together with the former superintendent of the Central Archives of the Italian State, Stefano Vitali – unfortunately we found confirmation of our concerns. Some funds are stored in less than ideal conditions and are not actually consultable. We must therefore intervene as soon as possible, reorganizing and digitizing the material to facilitate its use. Otherwise – warns the academic – we run the risk of losing a precious set of sources necessary to reconstruct the political history of the republic in the second half of the twentieth century”.
From this perspective and in the framework of the research, financed by the University of San Marino and developed over more than two years of activity, last December the University of San Marino organized a free training seminar on database management and the conservation of digital archives aimed at parties and movements, trade unions, bodies and other entities, with academics and professionals active in leading cultural institutions such as the National Central Library of Florence.
“The problem – continues Gorgolini, coordinator of a project which involved, among other things, the analysis of over 2 thousand folders in which documents are collected which, if lined up, would extend for over 300 meters – is that in some cases the documents are preserved in places that are not easily accessible and there is no trained staff capable of facilitating the researchers' study work".
In this sense, one of the hypothesized solutions is represented by the creation of a website called to collect all the material, divided by funds and into specific sections, with the possibility of carrying out searches by keywords and thus facilitating the consultation of scholars and simple users interested in learning more about some pages of San Marino political history. It would thus be possible, from any computer, to access for example the leaflets distributed in May 1970 by the Communist Party
San Marino against the role of the United States in the war in Cambodia, or to a vast collection dedicated to the Arengo.
The study involved academics from the University of San Marino such as Michele Chiaruzzi, director of the Research Center for International Relations, and Massimo Mastrogregori, director of the Center for Gramscian Studies, together with collaborators and institutional representatives. Among them the director of the Cultural Institutes, Paolo Rondelli, who in the book edited a chapter dedicated to the rules and practices for digital archiving on Titan.
The volume, published by the University of San Marino, is available in bookstores and online.