Oral sources database

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The oral sources database is a project created by Giorgio Delle Donne proposed in 2003 and launched in 2004 for the Provincial Library of the Italian language of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano.

In 2003, Delle Donne prepared and organized a series of conferences, to be held at the Library, concerning the theme: "memory and identity". These conferences became a theoretical platform of reference regarding the issue, with speeches by local and national experts who analysed at various levels the issues concerning the relationship between memory and identity in terms of national, political, religious, linguistic, genre and class identity and in emigration and in multiethnic societies. The individual and collective memory, in fact, is not an enormous depot for the preservation of all of the events ever experienced, but rather a continuously evolving database subjected to cancellations, rejections, corrections and revisions based on many conscious and subconscious elements. This turmoil determines aggregational or disaggregational identification processes that are in continuous mutation: events that have marked the life experience of individuals, such as emigration, the meeting/clash with new and different cultures, disorientation, identification and/or contrast that produce hubs of thought and of reprocessing.

The use of oral sources in historical research took hold in Italy in the last fifty years " although some research had been performed earlier still " especially in the fields of worker, women and youth movements that for many decades played an important role in politics and in society but produced very little documentation on paper. The picture is further complicated by a great number of examples of "co-research" carried out by the same actors of the political movements, often in open contrast with academic historical researchers.

Starting from these "militant" origins, oral history progressively developed its theoretical counterpart with issues that addressed the methodological problems of selection of witnesses, relations between interviewer and interviewee, interview conduction and its preservation, cataloguing, enhancement, etcetera, dialectically aimed at those who questioned the reliability of oral sources where historical research is concerned, thus laying claim to the positive aspects of the aspects that had been formerly challenged as limitations of the source, especially objectivity and subjectivity, changes in evidence with the passing of time and witness credibility.

The onset of the use of magnetic tape recording in the 1940's and its subsequent portability thus solved the methodological problems linked to interview transcription, while the spread and miniaturization of video cameras then also allowed the recording of the image of the interviewees and of their gesturing.

As it became increasingly easier to collect evidence relating to biographies of individuals or the memories that various people held of the same events, it became even more evident that often history is not remembered as it is written by historians, because they follow different production and distribution paths. Individual and collectives memories therefore follow different but intertwining paths. The individual memories develop within social scenarios of the memory also determined by political and social events subsequent to the events remembered. This mechanism therefore requires the generation of thought not only on history but also on memory, its production, reproduction and preservation, thus requiring the collection of memories not only about actions performed but also about the intentions, motivations and satisfaction relating to such actions. Equally important are the potential applications of such research on oral sources in the teaching of history, starting with the availability of sources within the students" families. This highlights the function of narration within the family as the first identificatory element, starting from identity of genre to the other levels.

Contemporary history does not set limits to "worthy of note" topics from the point of view of research and of teaching. This means that the proliferation of topics is matched by an equal proliferation of possible sources, even when aware of the difficulties inherent to the filing, cataloguing and supply of the information which, when in overabundance and not catalogued, becomes useless and produces an effect similar to that due to the lack of it. Information therefore becomes the obvious assumption of knowledge, but only when it is individually and socially metabolized into a social picture of reference.

The video-recorded interviews have been conducted by Giorgio Delle Donne, aided by Manuel Chieregato and Sandro Saltuari for the filming, since 2004. The first set foresees the realization of 150 interviews of witnesses of significance in the fields of culture, school education, information, art, politics, unions, labour, economy, professions, justice, music, the Italian Resistance and youth associations.

The interviews follow the typical "life experiences" scheme, consisting of a first part that is similar for everyone (identification, brief biography, etc.) and a second part typical for each of the fields indicated above.

This has generated a first set of oral sources, that may be used by contemporary and future researchers and educators in the conduction of research projects and in the teaching of local history. This set is also an incentive for current researchers and students in their integration of this heritage with the addition of more material, sure that these interviews shall be catalogued and preserved.

Following the Bibliografia della questione altoatesina (Bibliography concerning the South Tyrol issue), that includes over 22,000 datasheets collected in 26 European databases and libraries (ISIS-Unesco software), created in 1989, the research project concerning the material about South Tyrol (newsreels and documentaries) kept in the Archivio dell"Istituto Luce (Luce Institute Database) of Rome, created in 1996, and the research project regarding the material about South Tyrol in the Archivio della Televisione delle Alpi (Alps Television Database), (film library footage and news reports), created in 2000, all material then duplicated, digitalized, catalogued and made available on the Internet, this digitalized database of video interviews is a further element of the "database of the present" that includes "new sources" for the study on and teaching of local contemporary history.

The material was catalogued using UNESCO's ISIS software, distributed in Italy by DBA of Florence.

Overall, we entered 316 general topics, 1,439 topics relating to individuals, 686 topics relating to geographical locations and 549 topics relating to organizations, amounting to a total of 2,990 topics. The data base includes over 15,000 words.

Bolzano, 30 June 2007.

Giorgio Delle Donne