The Digital Archive as an Inclusive Tool for Knowledge Construction Through Design Practices

Abstract

The paper offers a multi-focused reflection on the relationship between the evolution of the archive and the issues of access and knowledge acquisition. The authors recognize the digital archive as a resource that, from accessibility to information, through the empowerment of individuals, makes people autonomous in their own construction of knowledge. Briefly reconstructing the evolutionary events of the archive – from a private repository of documents to a platform for online content sharing – the research, through the presentation of some case studies, highlights the main factors that have characterized the process of the progressive opening of the archive towards inclusion: the opening process on contents, collected and organized to reach extended audiences by increasing social, political and cultural impact, and the opening process on user experience on which the design discipline works through interaction and experience practices.