Look, Represent, Imagine: mapping of geocartographic assets and documents for the organization of knowledge

Abstract

The current Geography section of the Library of the Department of Modern Letters and Cultures contains geo-documental and cartographic heritage collected since 1877. Over 15,000 objects (maps, models, globes, tellurs, epidiascopes, glass photographic plates, atlases and rare books, etc.) have been the subject of restoration, digitization and metadata interventions for about a decade with the aim of fully recovering their cultural value activating practices of reuse and giving new meaning, which allow an effective and complete patrimonialization. This proposal intends to further structure the process on the level of knowledge organization in order to build "other" narratives, different from the past not only on a diachronic level, but also because they are attentive to historically neglected and/or unrecognized areas and dimensions, integrating the perspective of gender and postcolonial studies. We will then proceed with the creation of thematic, experiential, interdisciplinary path, designed to be used and enjoyed through interactive tools to be placed on equipment already acquired thanks to previous University funding (55'' interactive pixxboard, 43'' interactive totem and 86” professional monitor). Through the creation of geo-cartographic tools, storymaps for images, video reconstructions and interviews with privileged testimonies, the research intends to put a value on the geo-documental and cartographic heritage of the Department in order to rethink and reshape the founding ideas and thoughts of a pivotal discipline, such as geography, which fulfills in the training of the younger generations the indispensable social function of critical knowledge that cannot be substituted for the understanding of territorial complexity, so that they themselves acquire and make their own basic projects to establish themselves as "citizens of the world".