Towards a Library of Babel ? Reflections on the (In)Completeness of Digital Archiving (Bergame & on line)

The Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the University of Bergamo (Italy) proudly announces the following hybrid conference:

Towards a Library of Babel ? Reflections on the (In)Completeness of Digital Archiving

28th-29th April 2022

On site: University of Bergamo, Sant’Agostino, Aula 5 - Sala Conferenze

Online: tinyurl.com/DigitalArchivesBG

28th April 2022

2pm-2.30pm Prof. Rossana Bonadei: Opening remarks

2.30m-5.30pm  What are digital archives? What cultural power do they have?
In our increasingly dematerialised world, digital libraries consortia store millions and millions of books, to the point where national archives are supposed to hold a (digital) copy of every book published annually. These extensive archives seem to embrace everything – is this really the case?
Chair: Prof. Valeria Gennero
Discussants: Prof. Elena Bougleux, PhD Student Simone Abbiati

2.30pm-3.15pm Prof. Isabel Galina (National University of Mexico / University College London): “The Illusion of Everything – Notions of Completeness in Digital National Library Collections”

3.15pm-3.30pm Q&A

3.40pm-4.25pm Glen Layne-Worthey (University of Illinois / HathiTrust Digital Library): “Billions of Borgesian ‘Infinitely Thin Pages’: The
HathiTrust Digital Library”

4.25pm-4.40pm Q&A

4.50pm-5.30pm Discussion


29th April 2022

9.15am-12.15pm How do we start creating digital archives? Do we ever ‘finish’?
By focusing on specific archival cases, we are going to discuss the technical and philosophical implications of creating a digital archive.
Who is responsible for the creation and maintenance of such an archive? What steps do they take? How do their choices impact the cultural power archives hold?
Chair: Flaminia Nicora
Discussants: Mario Verdicchio, Simone Abbiati

9.15am-10am Francesca Tomasi (Università di Bologna): “Semantic Modelling in Digital Cultural Archives”

10am-10.15am Q&A

10.25am-11am Huw Jones (University of Cambridge): “The Sum of Its Parts: Selection, Intention and Naming in the Construction of the Digital Archive”

11am-11.15am Q&A

11.25am-12.15pm Discussion

2.30pm-5.30pm Using digital archives to conduct literary research
Two literature researchers and creators of databases are going to illustrate how they use Digital Humanities to make literature more accessible. Digital tools can widen the lenses through which we have read certain classics so far: such is the case for the works of Virginia Woolf and Molière.
Chair: Rossana Bonadei
Discussants: Anna De Biasio, Fabio Scotto, Marta Colleoni, Luca Pinelli

2.30pm-3.15pm Elisa Bolchi (Università di Ferrara): “ItalianWoolf Project: The Challenges of Digital Archiving”

3.15pm-3.30pm Q&A

3.40pm-4.25pm Christophe Schuwey (Yale University): “Visualizing Molière and 17th -Century Culture Today”

4.25pm-4.40pm Q&A

4.50pm-5.30pm Final discussion

5.30pm Rossana Bonadei: Closing remarks

Scientific committee: Rossana Bonadei, Elena Bougleux, and Flaminia Nicora.

Scientific and organising committee: Simone Abbiati, Marta Colleoni, and Luca Pinelli.