Digital humanities and libraries

Abstract

The beginnings of Digital humanities are complex to delineate but in any case connected with the use of existing libraries (in the Middle Ages or in the 19th century) or with the creation of new libraries at the end of the last century, in the projects of the Index Thomisticus, of Computer assisted tools for Septuagint studies, of the Thesaurus linguae Graecae.
The basic methodological imprint, through this multi-temporal and multi-center start, is the study of the texts around which very different disciplines even apparently (or really) distant get in touch with each other. In the international context, this imprint is questioned as it would be exclusionary with respect to a variety of subjects whose horizon ranges from cultural studies, to media studies, to the geopolitical inclusion of the South of the world.
The Italian situation, also through AIUCD, the Association of informatica umanistica and digital culture, is characterized instead by the ability to recognize in constantly renewed forms the vital capacity of text and textuality to constitute the connective of a variety of contents and contexts.