La ricerca sulle ultime lettere della Resistenza dagli anni Cinquanta a oggi

Abstract

Ultime lettere di condannati a morte e di deportati della Resistenza italiana database is a no longer very recent tool, yet of great vitality and usefulness, as evidenced by the sporadic but constant additions of documents, access statistics and feedback from the public, often of non-specialists. The project stems from the book (and the related research) Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza italiana, published in the 1950s and edited by Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli, but benefits from the new context of both technology and culture in the 2000s. This article, starting with a brief examination of the nature and contexts of production of such epistolary, aims to analyse these important differences and their consequences in terms of outcomes. Primarily, the database made it possible to trace more accurately the origin of the documents. But, above all, it has allowed to reconstruct more faithfully the texts (not infrequently subject to omissions or alteration at the transcription stage) and to add important ‘context’ information (such as writing supports or the way of writing and occupying the spaces on the sheet) in the frequent cases in which it has been possible to recover the autograph originals of the letters. This article will also highlight some of the evidence that the database has made possible through the inclusion of search filters and a form for searching for words and expressions in the text of the messages.

Keywords

• Digital history. Epistolary. Resistance. Semantic web. World War II