Digital technologies for the first network of the Italian University Museums

Twelve historical Italian Universities (Bari, Cagliari, Chieti-Pescara, Ferrara, Florence, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Parma, Perugia, Rome “La Sapienza”, Salento, Siena, Tuscia), with their museum centers and systems, museums and collections, through a creation of first network of Italian University Museums, are working at a project approved and financed by the Italian Ministry of the University and Research with the coordination of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. The first goal of the project is monitoring and cataloguing the cultural, historical and scientific heritage of the University Museums network, in order to create a national database, using the national catalogue standard released by the Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation of the Italian Ministry of the Cultural Heritage and Tourism within the General Informative System for Cataloguing SIGECWeb. The final tool of the network is a bilingual web portal (in Italian and English) to rationalize the presence of the Italian University Museums on the web, for strengthening and standardizing the presentation of their quality contents on the web with four common thematic and multidisciplinary itineraries through their most relevant collections: stories, stories of scientific instruments, landscape, environment. The use of the digital technologies will contribute to the knowledge and valorisation of the cultural, historical and scientific heritage of the University Museums network.