The first network of Italian University Museums to enhance the Scientific Cultural Heritage through the multimedia technologies

A first network of Italian University Museums among thirteen Italian Universities (Modena, Bari, Cagliari, Chieti-Pescara, Ferrara, Florence, II University of Naples, Parma, Perugia, Rome “La Sapienza”, Salento, Siena, Tuscia) has been recently approved and financed by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research. The main objective of this network is to contribute, through multimedia technologies, to knowledge and to enhancement of scientific cultural heritage with the collaboration of UMAC University Museums and Collections International Committee of ICOM. The final target will be a bilingual web portal, realized, on purpose for the project, in an innovative perspective considering the peculiar features of the different University Museums collections, the experiences of each, their interdisciplinary characterization and the possible uses in a contemporary historical, social and cultural context. The first step is to monitor the scientific cultural heritage of the University Museums, in order to complete the already existing databases and align them to catalogue standards released by and in collaboration with the Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation of the MIBAC. By this database it will possible to design and implement four main common thematic cultural itineraries through the museums of the participating Universities about stories, landscape, stories of scientific instruments, starting from museums premises and their scientific collections. The new multimedia technologies will allow to create cultural communication programs that involve the emotional and sensorial spheres, by adopting different educational strategies, for general audience and also for touristic itineraries as well as for students of different kinds and levels of schools.