🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the limitations of conventional archival digitization practices, which typically prioritize image scanning and dissemination while neglecting the intrinsic hierarchical structure and archival bond—particularly when handling audiovisual and other multimedia materials, where preserving original organizational logic and semantic relationships proves challenging. To overcome this, the paper introduces the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) into archival science for the first time, integrating archival principles with semantic modeling techniques to develop a digital representation model that respects provenance and original order. This model enables structured, semantically rich expression of hierarchical relationships and archival bonds. The approach is validated through a case study of the “PCI-Unitelefilm” fonds from the AAMOD Foundation, demonstrating its effectiveness in maintaining archival integrity and enhancing semantic interoperability.
📝 Abstract
Within the archival sector, digitization has long been a strategic initiative to ensure greater availability of historical documents. In recent years, the promotion of guidelines and standards, combined with technological advancements, has established methodologies and best practices and developed tools to facilitate massive digitization projects. However, despite the availability of technological solutions and guidelines, digitization is intended mostly to scan documents and make the outcome images available online. This practice can be problematic in representing the complex fonds structure made of relations, the archival bond that establishes the natural ordering of documents into archival units. This is particularly relevant when the fonds also has a multimedia component, such as an audiovisual component, that is often reproduced on different platforms disconnected from textual documents. This article addresses the challenges linked to digitization in the archival sector and proposes a methodological framework for representing fonds with respect to their native organization. For this purpose, the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) is employed to configure a specific model that respects the archive's hierarchical structure. In particular, this model is configured to maintain the archival bond and enhance the resource's semantic aspect to make the IIIF model semantically interoperable. To demonstrate the adaptability of the framework to the archival domain, in this work, the''PCI-Unitelefilm''fonds of the Fondazione Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico (AAMOD) served as the case study.