Introduction

The history of the project

The collections

3Gra.fo preserved different kinds of archives stemming from different fields of research. Some of the archives preserved originated from research projects conducted by linguists in order to document or investigate specific features of Tuscan dialects (e.g. ‘Alto Mugello’, ‘Atlante Lessicale Toscano’, ‘Silvia Calamai’, ‘Carta dei Dialetti Italiani’, ‘Seminari di Linguistica Generale’). Other archives were collected in an anthropological, folkloric or ethnomusicological perspective and thus concern folk music, folk literature and folk culture in general (e.g. ‘Edda Ardimanni’, ‘Roberta Beccari’, ‘Vanna Brunetti’, ‘Anna Buonomini’, ‘Paolo De Simonis’ - collection ‘Canti popolari del Mugello’, ‘FLOG’ - collections ‘Gilberto Giuntini’ and ‘Nunzi Gioseffi’, ‘Sergio Gargini’, ‘Benozzo Gianetti’, ‘Duse Lemetti - Gruppo Vegliatori’, ‘Museo del Bosco’). Yet others stem from history and sociology, and concern topics like working conditions in the twentieth century, labour movement, women labour, “Italian diaspora”, impact of industrialisation on rural society, memories of the First and Second World War (e.g. ‘FLOG’ - collection ‘Andrea Grifoni’, ‘ASMOS’, ‘Neri Binazzi’, ‘Cappelli di paglia’, ‘Dina Dini’, ‘Elba’, ‘Roberto Segnini’, ‘Angela Spinelli’).

How to search documents on the Gra.fo web portal

7As shown in Fig. 2, in the Advanced search, it is possible to search documents according to three main categories: ‘Contenuti’ (‘Content’), ‘Luoghi’ (‘Place’), and ‘Tempi’ (‘Time’), which in turns include some subdivisions. The first category, ‘Contenuti’, includes ‘Argomento’ (‘Topic’), ‘Genere’ (‘Genre’), ‘Tipologia’ (‘Type’), and ‘Varietà linguistica’ (‘Language variety’):

• ‘Argomento’ – Here the user can choose among around 130 different topics (among others, Agriculture, Anarchism, Animals, Art, Autobiographies, Biographies, Blacksmiths, Carnival, Cinema, Clothing, Coalmen, Cutlers, Dialects and language varieties, Domestic activities, Drug addiction, Emigration, Environment, Exhibitions, Family, Fascism, Fishing, Folk dance, Folk literature, Folk medicine, Folk music and songs, Folk theatre, Folk traditions, Food, Games, Handicraft, Human body, Immigration, Legends, Literature, Local history, Magic, Material culture, Music festivals, Nazism, Peasant culture, Peasant traditions, Political history, Politics, Post-war period, Pre-industrial society, Prostitution, Racism, Religion, Religious feasts, Rituals, School, Sharecropping, Theatre, Time, Traditional family, Traditional festivals, Traditional food, Traditional jobs, Traditions, Women’s condition, Women’s history, Work, 1st World War, 2nd World War). It is possible to search different topics simultaneously: since only one topic per document is assigned, the results will include all the documents containing one of the selected topics.

• ‘Genere’ – Here the user can choose among around forty different genres (among others, Answer to linguistic questionnaire, Autobiography, Ethno-text, Image/object description, Interview, Legend, Lullaby, Narrative song, Poem, Political song, Prayer, Proverb, Reading, Recipe, Religious poetry, Riddle, Ritual, Spontaneous conversation, Tale, Theatre, Tongue twister). Like with the topics, it is possible to search different genres simultaneously: since only one genre per document is assigned, the results will include all the documents appointed with one of the selected genres.

• ‘Tipologia’ – This section includes two different fields, the second being dependent on the first. In the first, the user can choose between sung, non-sung, and mixed documents (the latter containing both speech and singing). Sung documents can in turn be distinguished in formalised documents (e.g. Lullaby, Narrative song), improvised documents (e.g. improvised ottava rima), and mixed documents (characterised by both formalised and improvised singing). Similarly, non-sung documents can in turn be distinguished in formalised documents (e.g. Poetry, Proverb), non-formalised documents (e.g. Interview, Spontaneous conversation), and mixed documents (characterised by both formalised and non-formalised speech). When choosing mixed documents in the first field, there is no further option available in the second (i.e. mixed documents cannot be distinguished into further categorisations).

• • 7 Ibidem and Luciano Giannelli, Toscana, Pisa: Pacini, 2000.

  ‘Varietà linguistica’ – This field allows the user to search documents according to the language variety spoken by the informants. It is possible to choose different language varieties simultaneously: since only one variety per document is assigned, the results will include all the documents containing one of the selected varieties. The taxonomy adopted by Gra.fo stems from Luciano Giannelli’s taxonomy7 and includes urban varieties (of Florence, Prato, Pistoia, Lucca, Massa, Pisa, Leghorn, Arezzo, Siena, Grosseto), areas of influence (of Florence, Pistoia, Lucca, Pisa, Leghorn, Arezzo, Siena, Grosseto), areas of transition (of Volterra, Massa, Piombino), and other minor varieties (e.g. of the Elba Island). The sociolinguistic motivations for such choice are twofold: a) cities are a vehicle for linguistic identity and usually influence the surrounding areas; b) Tuscany does not have a hegemonic centre influencing the whole territory of the region.

9‘Tempi’ refers to the time when the single documents were collected. By setting the dates on the available calendars, the user can search for documents collected over a certain period of time (e.g. between 1 January 1970 to 31 December 1990).

10In the Advanced search, the user can select only one criterion (e.g. search all sung documents, or documents collected in Florence, or documents about the Second World War), or use different criteria simultaneously (e.g. one can search for sung, formalised documents produced in the Florentine variety, or for interviews about labour work collected in Prato between 1970 and 2000).

11After selecting the desired criteria, the user will get a record enlisting the archives and the number of single documents satisfying those particular criteria (e.g. the list on the right in Fig. 2 shows the names of the archives containing interviews collected from 1961 to 2000, together with the number of relevant documents). By clicking on any of such items, the user can access the related cataloguing records.

Cataloguing records

Dettagli’On the left, there are the title, the full summary, and the name of the archive (and relative subsections) to which the document belongs (full description of archive and subsections appear when moving the mouse over the symbols). On the right, the user can find the following: subtitle, keywords, date and place of collection, setting, type of document, topic, genre, language variety, bibliography, aims of the investigation, type of carrier, information about privacy restrictions, about interviewer(s) and interviewee(s), and about accompanying materials. On the top right, there are the downloadable files associated with the document: the audio file containing the oral testimony (in .mp3 format), the accompanying materials and the transcriptions (in .pdf format, if available).

Gra.fo as a crowdsourcing platform

13Public involvement is highly welcomed in Gra.fo, which attempted to employ crowdsourcing by soliciting contributions from the web portal users. As shown in Fig. 5, these are invited 1) to entrust their oral documents to the project in order to digitise them and ensure their long-term preservation, and 2) to catalogue or transcribe one (or more) of the Gra.fo documents that have not been catalogued and transcribed yet. Those who do this will see their contribution acknowledged in the digital files and records related to the documents that they donated, catalogued or transcribed. Hence, not only does Gra.fo return to the community a treasure of immense value; it also encourages the community to take part in building it.

14Unfortunately, though, the Gra.fo web portal does not seem to be able to work as a crowdsourcing platform. This is probably because the initiative has not been publicised enough and through the right media (the project is not present in any social network, which might be a limit). More generally, the portal seems to be appreciated and used mostly by researchers, less by the wider public, which finds it not very easy to consult. Therefore, the resources have been scarcely reused: apart from the dissertations supervised by Silvia Calamai, the only documented case is a documentary exhibition on the archive ‘Cappelli di paglia’ put up by the Soprintendenza archivistica e bibliografica della Toscana. In addition, even when some of the Gra.fo materials are reused, those who use them do not feel it their duty to inform the Gra.fo working group. The project Voci da ascoltare was created precisely to remedy this situation, i.e. to share the materials with a wider public (schoolteachers and students) and to ensure their correct use.

Dissemination

15Gra.fo started with a campaign to raise awareness among archives’ owners on the need for preserving, archiving and describing oral documents. Those who accepted to join Gra.fo were informed about the project stages and the creation of the web portal, they were asked to choose the access policy for their materials, and were invited to the Gra.fo final conference to be consigned a certificate declaring them as ‘Protectors of oral culture’ (Fig. 6).